Judy Pappas moved to Newport’s Victoria Square Apartments in 1964 when she was 12 years old.
Now, at 70, she told the Newport City Commission at Monday night’s meeting that “I thought I would die down there.”
That was until she received a notice to vacate the apartment that she has called home for the last 58 years. She has until the end of January to find a new home.
“I’m packing up stuff,” Pappas said. “I have no idea where I’m going, but I’m packing.”
Since residents received the notices to vacate on July 19 from the new owners of the apartments, Sunset Property Solutions or SPS Management, many said they have found limited to no options as affordable as their current rent — that, or they are met with year-long waiting lists.
Pappas said she has been trying to get into senior living facilities in Newport, where she has had to put her name on a year-long waiting list, knowing she doesn’t have nearly that much time.
“That’s sad because to get into senior citizen buildings, somebody’s got to die or go into a nursing home or have to go live with another relative,” Pappas said. “You have to sit there like a vulture waiting for somebody to die so you can get in.”
She said she blamed the city.
“I blame you all for not seeing this and getting more places for handicapped senior people, just older people,” Pappas said.
Newport needs to start planning and building more housing for its senior citizens, Pappas said.
Questions among residents at the meeting were about where Newport elected officials have been over the past month since the notices to vacate were sent out.
“And there’s nothing that can be done about it?” Victoria Square resident Yvonne Chandler asked at the meeting. “Well, I’m a registered voter. I hope something gets done about it. I know a lot of other registered voters.”
She told the commission that someone needed to step up and do something about the situation.
“I didn’t want to come up here and cry, but that’s the only thing I can do right now,” Chandler said.
Victoria Square resident Mariah Norris said city officials need to take a better hands-on approach in all parts of the community, not just what looks best to the outside world.
“We want you to also acknowledge that this alone sets a dangerous precedent moving forward for other developers,” Norris said. “For the lack of your attention will allow other developers to do the same thing time and again.”
She said residents have accepted that there is nothing they can do to keep their homes, but that doesn’t mean the city can’t step in to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“What we can do is ask for you to acknowledge that this is only just the beginning and that it’s not just going to happen to us,” Norris said. “It’s going to happen to future residents too.”
Newport Mayor Tom Guidugli said the sale of Victoria Square “escalated quite rapidly” and caught the city off guard.
“We believe that the developer handled this very poorly,” Guidugli said. “And we’re looking for ways to find solutions.”
Guidugli said the city has considered some of these long-term solutions: phase construction for the apartments, restoration, and working with SPS Management to make a percentage of the property affordable housing units.
But the city would have to gain leverage with SPS Management, according to Guidugli, to have further discussions.
Newport City attorney John Hayden talked about ways the city could accomplish that.
“We have to find a way to get some leverage,” Hayden said. “We can do that to a degree through making sure they abide by all of our zoning laws, our codes, etc. They maintain the property to a certain degree, things of that nature. When you get into ‘Can we buy more time? More money?’ How do we extract that from the developer? So theoretically, there are some community-based agreements.”
Hayden said it’s all about incentives.
“If we were to give them anything as a city, incentive-wise, what are they going to give back a group of people that have been displaced or harmed,” Hayden said. “And then you have to weigh that as to whether them giving somebody more time necessitates that we should give them some sort of tax abatement.”
Efforts from Neighborhood Foundations and Brighton Center led to SPS Management giving tenants $500 and an additional 30 days, as announced by the management group on July 27 after LINK nky began reporting on the issue.
Executive Director of the Dayton Housing Authority and candidate for Newport City Commission Gordon Henry said everyone who spoke of waitlists at the meeting was correct because there is “not enough affordable housing at all.”
Gordon brought up that the type of housing in Newport doesn’t reflect the kind of jobs in the city, such as customer service, retail, bartending, etc.
He told the commission there are currently no incentives for developers to come into the city and create affordable housing.
“It’s always developers who come in and who get IRBs (industrial revenue bonds) and don’t contribute back to the community,” Gordon said.
He said if developers come into the city and request IRBs, he would like to see set-asides for affordable housing. Gordon also said he would like to see Community Benefits Agreements, which are contracts between a developer and a community-based organization to represent residents’ interests.
LINK partner WCPO reported on a community benefits agreement between FC Cincinnati and the West End in 2019, in which the team agreed to invest back into the community as it acquired property in the historic Cincinnati neighborhood to build what is now TQL Stadium.
Another solution Gordon offered was looking into the city’s zoning laws and rezoning for multifamily structures — not just single-family homes.
“We know Sunset Properties has the ability to help these folks even more,” Gordon said. “They paid $28 million for this property. They are going to come to the city, and they’re going to request IRBs, and that’s when we need to challenge them to do affordable housing and set aside at least 20%.”
He said if the developers disagree, they shouldn’t be awarded IRBs because they need to be “good stewards” to the majority of Newport residents, not just a select few.
Chair of the housing committee for the Democratic Socialists of America, Hayley Powell, said the “inaction” and “lack of preparation” by the city is a “policy choice.”
“Over the past 20-plus years, the city, through the Neighborhood Foundations, has made affordable housing a priority in the city,” Newport City Manager Tom Fromme said. “During this period, they have completed 309 affordable units, with 24 more currently under construction, and have dedicated over $100 million to their projects.”
Newport homeowner Dewey Estep came to the meeting to show his support to his neighbors at Victoria Square.
Estep said he sees the residents as “abandoned.”
“It is nice to hear that there is some care at the beginning (of the meeting). That’s fantastic,” Estep said. “But it needs to be louder, and you know the past is the past, but it should have been sooner.”
As a west side resident, Estep said he wonders what his neighborhood is going to look like in a couple of years and if he will still be able to live there with new developments coming in. He said he would like to remain in the city for at least his 30-year mortgage.
Estep called on the commission to discuss how to never let a situation like Victoria Square happen again.
Guidugli said the city did not respond sooner because they had limited information, and “words ring hollow.”
He said the goal was to create a wraparound support framework — such as the partnering of agencies at the NAACP meeting organized for tenants on July 27 — and be prepared to present that.
Guidugli said the agencies from that meeting have continued discussions to find lasting solutions.
“I’m hearing you all; I’m seeing you. And I wasn’t at your (NAACP) meeting because I was out of town at a business conference, but I would have been there, and I’m here tonight,” Guidugli said. “And I’m here every day, and my cell phone is everywhere. And I received a lot of phone calls. And I’ll take every phone call.”
He said he doesn’t know what the solution looks like yet, but he promised residents the city would actively work on finding one.
“As frustrated as you are, you’re not alone. I’m frustrated,” Guidugli said. “But no one is happy about this situation and what it’s doing to our community.”
