The Ann Arbor YMCA is moving to a new facility, to be built at the site of
the old Tech Center.  The new facility, though, won't have the 100 units of
single-adult affordable housing that the old has.  AATA would like to buy the
old site, raze the existing facility, and build a larger transit center there.
AATA has said it will sell air rights to a dveloper to put something on top
of the transit center, but they're not interested in getting into the
affordable housing business (reasonable; they're a transit authority).  If
the housing disappears, though, the Y will be fined for violating conditions
of a settlement that requires that housing to exist; this fine will prevent
them from being able to move.  The City may block the sale of the old facility
to AATA for this reason.

So, what can be done to allow the Y to build their new facility, AATA to build
*their* new facility, and the affordable housing situation to be, at worst,
kept stable?

32 responses total.

My own first instinct is to form (yes, another) non-profit entity to build
and manage a new facility at that site.  The new construction would be a
transit center on the first floor, along with some rent-generating retail
space (I can't think of development without "mixed-use" sneaking in
somewhere.).  The second floor would house whatever the heck is currently at
AATA's place out in the middle of nowhere. (what *is* out there?  I assume
they have some sort of maintenance facility somewhere, which wouldn't be
relocatable, but anything office-like really ought to move downtown), and then
affordable housing on top.

Having affordable housing *at* the transit center would be a good thing; it
would give the residents access to the widest range of jobs possible, thus
giving them an opportunity to better their condition (fishing for right-wing
support).  Making sure that all of the AATA office space is at the downtown
facility would set a good example, both in terms of land use and choice of
transportation modes by AATA folks, and would free up their other facility
for sale.  Having a new, larger transit center downtown *is* important for
AATA, especially if they're going to end up in more of a regional role
(serving the whole county).  Not that the western municipalities
(cough-scio-township-cough) seem to be interested in that sort of thing...

I never knew the details of the agreement, but a couple of simple options
are: the YMCA can change the design of their new building to include the
agreed-to housing, and the YMCA can operate the suggested housing addition
at the transit center.

In the past few years, something like three new residential complexes
have been built along Main and William.  The new building at State and
Washington is to include housing, too.  Adding a housing component to
a new building at Fourth and East William wouldn't be that difficult;
finding someone to operate it may be.

Hmm... Unless I've totally lost track of who is doing what, the new
homeless shelter on West Huron is just about complete.  Maybe the folks
running that endeavour could be persuaded to operate something at one
(or both) of the Y's locations.

I think a big part of the problem is that, for the Y to build replacement
housing at their new site would be a big capital expenditure that they aren't
interested in.  Likewise, for housing units to be maintained at the old Y
after AATA buys it, the units would have to be rebuilt--since the old facility
isn't useful for AATA, but only the site, the old structure is coming down
if they get their hands on it--and that would be a capital expenditure AATA
isn't interested in.

Which is the YMCA more interested in: paying the penalty for violating the
agreement, or finding a way to maintain the agreement?

Apparently the Y has said that the penalty if the housing disappears ($600k,
I think) will be enough to prevent them from building their new facility. 
If it's that severe, I don't know why they didn't figure out what they were
going to do about the housing *before* they bought the new site and put up
the old for sale.  (or why they don't just bump up the purchase price by $600k
to any buyer who won't take on the resopnsibility for the housing)

Well, let's see.  Where to start.

Right: the AATA is a transit authority and would be in serious legal trouble
using taxes collected for tranist to manage, operate, or own housing.

Wrong:  AATA offices are an integral part of the bus facility.  There is no
way to separate the "office" uses from the bus uses.  So there is nothing to
sell.  And it would be a move in the wrong direction to separate the bus
supervision from the buses themselves.  And it makes no sense to move any
office operations from a lower cost location (just nort of Eisenhower, and
east of State) to a higher cost location (center city Ann Arbor).  

Wrong:  "Just up the price"  The Y tried to sell the site for $7 million
several years ago.  They got no takers: it is overpriced at that level.  

The only buyer who even made an offer was the AATA at $5 million.  During the
due-dilegence period the AATA discovered that there was asbestos in the old
building that added a significant amount to the cost of tearing down the
building.  The AATA offer had not included asbestos abatement costs.

The AATA lowered its offer by the amount of additional cost.  The Y declined
to sell the property at that price.  Negotiations ceased.  

This spring the Y (which had based its capital fund raising plan on getting
the full $7 million from the site) returned to the AATA with a request to sell
them the property for $5 million.  No one else in the intervening years had
been interested in the property.  

The AATA made a new offer several weeks ago.  I can tell you that it was
significantly less than $5 million.  A couple million less.  

The offer is now in the hands of the Y and its board.  The offer does not
include the AATA paying the loss-of-housing penalty that the Y will incur.

If the Y agrees to the AATA offer, the City of Ann Arbor has the
right-of-first-refusal at that price.  They can buy the property at the price
the AATA is willing to buy it for.  And then put up any housing/mix-use
property that they want.

About the 100 units of housing.  That housing is SRO, single-room-occupancy
housing.  The local not-for-profit that builds/buys/manages most of the low
income housing in Ann Arbor is Avalon Housing.  They will not manage SRO: it
is no longer considered adequate housing for even the worst off citizens. 
They are not interested in partnering with the Y or the AATA to replace what
currently exists.  

I cant spend more time right now on this item, but there's more to the story.

One big assumption in the first paragraph:  The only thing for sale is the
Y property, not the adjacent AATA property.  There is no way the AATA will
sell that property to anyone to develop, even if they offered to include
transit space on the ground level.  

Without the adjacent propety, the Y site is too small to develop, especially
given the city's interest in keeping building heights low.  

Blocking the sale.  

The city cannot block the sale of private property.  The Y can sell its
property to anyone it wants at any price it can get.  

However, because the Y asked for City money to expand its building some years
ago, it must repay that loan when it does sell.  The Y can get the loan
forgiven by continuing to operated low-income housing for the number of years
it agreed to, or by repaying the remaining loan balance in cash.  

In addition, the agreement allows the City the right-of-first refusal when
the property is sold.  Who ever makes an offer knows that the City can take
the property for that amount of money if they wish.  

The old facility isn't useful.
The old facility isn't useful because it is so far out of code that it would
cost more to renovate the housing section to make it legal than it would to
build a brand new building with the equivalent number of units anywhere in
the center city.  

The old facility also isn't useful because the low income housing people do
not accept that type of housing for individuals any more.  Avalon will not
build/manage SRO facilities.  

They Y has dug itself into a hole by trying to get out of an agreement to
provide low income housing in return for the city funding the Y expansion.
Their problems can be solved as gelinas suggested, by living up to their
agreement.  "a capital expenditure that they aren't interested in".  Oh well.
Wish we all could walk away from mortgages and loans by losing interest in
them.  

A capital expenditure the AATA isn't interested in.

Well, they're legally forbidden to use their tax money for anything but
providing
transportation services.  They'd quickly be slapped with a tax-payer
lawsuit if
they used their money to build housing.  Interested isn't the question.  

The city could use its tax money to build the housing if they wanted.
They already have a Housing Authority, and run a number of single family
homes, townhouse, and apartment developments.  The city so far feels it is
not a good use of their tax money to build housing on this site.

There, you see?  This is why I ask these things.  How do you know so much
about this, btw?

As a side note, when I said, "aren't interested in", I didn't mean it was just
a matter of changing their mind; I meant it was something they were incapable
of doing.  In the case of AATA running the housing, they're incapable of it
because they're a transit agency, as you said.  In the case of the Y
rebuilding 100 units of housing of any quality, they're incapable for lack
of money.  Sorry for the confusion...

I'm a former council member with an "urban meddling" degree who can't get
politics out of her system.  I volunteer for this stuff.

My memory of the Y/City deal is that the Y made some bad choices.  In
reality what they ended up doing was not supplying low income housing but
becoming a shelter for those who couldn't or wouldn't pay. 

At one point they were trying to evict non-paying tenants using the rules
allowed for hotels and motels.  This was challenged with homeless
advocates saying the Y was more of a traditional landlord and had to
follow lengthy a very lengthy and costly eviction process. 

Meanwhile, the sport/recreational part of their mission tanked as the
lobby filled with what was seen as threatening street people.  Business
dropped.  There wasn't the needed money for maintenance and improvements. 
Viscous circle.

They made a bad deal.  The city ended up being a little like a
social-issues loan shark. Now they have to either find a way out or
probably, eventually, go bankrupt. 

Now, my memory on all this is pretty thin, Colleen, so any clarifications
would be welcome. 

Keep tuned.  The City may actually exercise its right-of-first-refusal.

Yeah. We have to protect the people of Ann Arbor from the scary street 
people. If they build low cost housing downtown, business might drop. 
They should build this low cost housing somewhere else. Preferably 
someplace FAR from a bus line so these people cant get near Ann Arbor. 
And god knows we cant give them the same rights regular people have 
when it comes to tenent-landlord relations. This city needs to be able 
to evict the losers. 

I'm not sure where that response came from.  Nobody here is saying
shelters aren't needed and a necessary public service.  That I know of all
of Ann Arbor's shelters, both day and night, are in the downtown area. 

But if it makes you feel better to think we are all selfish and
uncaring rich folk, go for it.  It's part of Ann Arbor's mission. ;-)

Believe me, there are plenty of NIMBY types in Ann Arbor as there are 
in most affluent places. I dont think everyone in AA is a selfish 
uncaring rich person but a lot of them are. They often pretend to be 
caring but try to open a group home in their neighborhood and the 
resistance is amazing! This attitude of not really wanting to have to 
deal with the homeless is why having low income mentally ill folks 
hanging around the lobby of some place where they might go to workout 
doesnt work. Which of course makes one wonder about just what the Y's 
purpose is. Is it to provide yoga classes to a bunch of rich ex hippies 
or is it to serve the community as a whole which includes some poor 
people who might be dirty or talk crazy?

slynne is absolutely right.  One of the reasons some of the council members
are acting a bit crazed right now is that the Y site(s) are in places where
these marginal folks are already accepted.  They can't see any other spots
in Ann Arbor where neighborhoods won't bitterly oppose this kind of housing.

"This kind of housing" is NOT for the homeless.  These units require a regular
monthly income, paid on time, for single adults who can function well enough
to cook, shop, pay bills, etc.  

The Y's purpose has become "taking care of poor people who are
dirty and talk crazy to a good degree".  A worthwhile cause, 
for sure, but prior to becoming a low/no income landlord a really
big part of their mission was taking care of little kids.

There were/are some issues mixing those two populations.
And it wasn't with children being exposed to the lower income
population, heck most of the kids are from lower and middle
income homes.  The problem was safety.  I know of some of 
the solutions they tried to implement but not sure how well
they worked.

You know. When I was a kid, I was on a swim team. The Highland Park 
YMCA swim team as a matter of fact. The scary low income folks at the 
Ann Arbor Y have nothing on the people who used to stay at the Highland 
Park Y. The way the Highland Park Y dealt with the mixing of 
populations - children and scary mentally ill residents was to provide 
supervision. There was always an adult staff member in the lobby. 

The Ann Arbor Y does this too. I used to go there when I lived in Ann 
Arbor. It never struck me as a place where it would be unsafe to take 
kids for lessons or daycare or whatever. But of course, the low income 
people there are perceived to be a huge threat by the somewhat 
sheltered affluent parents in Ann Arbor who are used to all kinds 
of "diversity". You know, the kind of "diversity" where most people are 
very well off, most people are white but there are some pretty good 
Indian restaurants in town and maybe some fashionable homosexuals. I 
see your point that it is bad business for the Y to have actual low 
income, sometimes mentally ill, folks in any kind of public space where 
they might come into contact with regular people. 

(The new homeless shelter was bitterly opposed in its current location,
if I remember right.  And in a couple of other places, before it was
finally built.)

One thing that Ann Arbor has going for it is that there still are a few 
people around who really do care about having real diversity in town, 
which includes low income folks. 

It's not bad business, slynne, just not the business they were 
trying to provide.  Before they made the deal, that is.

I wonder what they were thinking when they chose to get into the low 
income housing business. Surely they had to know that the granola moms 
would never want their kids anywhere near someone with a mental 
illness. Maybe they honestly didnt consider that. 

Anyhow, I am surprised that Avalon isnt interested in providing this 
kind of housing. There is nothing wrong with single rooms like the Y 
has especially for short term situations. And trust me, as a person who 
worked with the mentally ill population, there is often a need to put 
someone up for just a month or two. The Y was considered a very 
valuable resource indeed. It had a lot of advantages. 

I can appreciate the Y's desire to get out of the low income housing 
thing since it is the sports/recreation side that brings in the most 
money. And, I think that those kinds of things are very valuable for 
the community. 

I just think it stinks that people in Ann Arbor pretend to be really 
caring and pretend to value "diversity" but then can so easily turn 
their backs on people who are different than they are, who are poor or 
mentally ill.

It is one of the reasons I am glad I live in Ypsi and also why I have 
mixed feelings about the way Ypsilanti is gentrifying. I mean, as a 
homeowner, I like the increase in value to my house. I like all the 
trendy shops that are opening. I am worried that folks will start 
getting uptight about trivial things like things like the mentally ill 
or group homes which so far are tolerated in Ypsilanti. 

Maybe the solution is to build some low income Y type single room 
housing in Ypsilanti. 

The YMCA is has been in the business of providing single-occupancy rooms
for a _long_ time; going on fifty years, easy, I'd guess, if not longer.
The population that needs those rooms seems to have changed, though.
Originally 'twas single men (women stayed at the YWCA) who were getting
established in a new city.  They had jobs but couldn't support a family,
nor did they have one.  Now, the population seems to include people who
don't have jobs.  I don't know why the change, though.

I'm glad you're glad you live in Ypsi.  It does seem like
a nice town. 

Avalon housing's explanation of why they are hesitant to get involved: There
has to be paid staff there 24/7 to control access to the rooms.  To keep
residents for "inviting" other people up to their rooms.  for/from  

That makes sense I guess. And yet, there is a real need for that kind 
of housing. Ask any social worker. I dont know what the solution is but 
I know if those rooms go away it will be a real loss for the area. 

The city council voted Thursday night to exercise its right of first refusal.

That means that they have offered the YMCA the $3.5 million that the AATA
offered.  Normally, I'd say it's a done deal.  However, there was a
deal-breaker for the Y in the offer.

When the Y accepted the AATA offer (which started the clock on the city's time
limit to exercise its right-of-first-refusal), the acceptance included a
deal-breaking clause which said that if the Y could not get the $600,000
forgiven, the AATA could not buy the building.  

I've been out of town, so I don't know if the City is going to buy it for 
$3.5 mil plus $600,000, or if the City is buying it for $3.5 mil and forgiving
the $600,000.  

The mayor of Ann Arbor, talking to the Chamber of Commerce/DDA breakfast on
several days after the vote, said  that they don't know if they want to
use the land to build housing or not.  They are considering using it for
city office space, and do not see any reason housing needs to be built
right there.  

It's my belief that the Democratic caucus on City Counsel is so large that
there are several factions within it, and that the mayor is not able to
control them.  Thus the fractured picture of "pro-greenspace, anti-height,
maybe-we-will-maybe-we-wont build housing".  

Since I was living out of state when all of this was going on, whatever came
of all of this? What's the old Y site being used for now? And was there ever
any new low-income housing built?  I know this area [like a lot of places
around the country] *need* more low-income housing.

The old Y site is still the old YMCA, vacant.  I've not heard that any new
low-income housing has been built.

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