Golden Tower, a public housing apartment complex in Covington, was recently denied official designation as a senior housing facility by an office within the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The department, often shortened to HUD, is the federal agency responsible for managing public housing throughout the United States.
The disapproval came as a surprise to both staff members and members of the Housing Authority of Covington’s Board of Commissioners.
The apartment complex is one of eight properties owned and operated by the authority. The 14-story complex was constructed in the late 1960s and has catered to elderly residents aged 55 and older for years. It even has special medical facilities in the building to aid with the residents’ age-related healthcare needs. The housing authority plans to reapply soon.
Steve Arlinghaus, the housing authority’s executive director, first announced the news at the commission meeting in April.
“We filed paperwork, and we received approval from HUD to designate, or I should say re-designate, as a senior status facility,” Arlinghaus said at the meeting on April 19. “Then we’re notified three or four or five days later from another agency from HUD that declined to approve our senior status.”
The housing authority must apply to get senior status for its buildings every three years. It had submitted its renewal application in late January.
According to a March 6 letter from HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, the housing authority’s application met all of the criteria for senior status as far as compliance with federal civil rights law was concerned.
By the end of the month, however, the authority received a letter from HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing, saying that the authority’s application did not meet the requirements for senior designation.
Arlinghaus said he was blindsided by the decision.
“We do not plan on changing anything,” Arlinghaus said, “because everyone that we have always talked with over the years since I’ve been here… it’s always been used as a senior citizen facility.”
“It’s been like this forever,” said deputy director Chris Bradburn after the April meeting.
The March 28 letter gives its reason for denying the approval: “The proposed designation (19% of the public housing inventory) is disproportionate to the demonstrated need (6% across public housing and housing voucher waitlists) for such a designation.”
In other words, there were not enough seniors in the authority’s current properties and on its waiting list to justify the designation.
At the meeting in April, Arlinghaus argued that this rationale proceeded from confusion on the part of the federal office.
“We had a high waiting list for residents to move in [to Golden Tower],” Arlinghaus said. “We no longer have that long waiting list because we closed our waiting list because of City Heights.”
In 2021, the housing authority began dispossessing the apartments at the City Heights public housing complex after the federal government approved its closing. A city press release from October of that year characterized the units as “severely deteriorated, outdated, and beyond saving.”
When the dispossession process began, the authority closed its other waiting lists to make room for former City Heights residents who wished to be relocated to other authority properties throughout the city.
“Whoever is on the other end of Washington is not–it’s not clicking,” Arlinghaus said.
At the meeting on May 17, Arlinghaus announced that he had requested a meeting with HUD staff to discuss how to improve their case and bolster their application before resubmitting for senior designation. Bradburn said that HUD had not yet responded to their request.
“It’s really more for guidance and technical assistance,” Bradburn said.
She added that the HUD field office in Louisville had expressed support for their application.
In spite of all of the bureaucratic hurdles, “we have still have seniors applying” to live in Golden Towers, she said.
HUD will have 60 days to respond to the authority’s new application once it’s submitted.
The next Board of Commissioners meeting will take place on June 21 at 4:30 p.m. at the housing authority’s central office off Madison Avenue in Covington.