Grant aims to aid low income seniors

LBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A recently awarded grant of nearly $2.1 million gets the Elderly Housing Development and Operations Corp., or EHDOC, halfway to building another 40-unit apartment complex for low income elderly people in Albuquerque.

The building will be located on a vacant piece of property adjacent to its Ed Romero Terrace at Texas and Central SE, just down the block from the Albuquerque Indian Center and the site of the now-under-construction Tiny Homes Village for the homeless.

The grant for $2,096,945 from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development was part of a larger allocation of $51 million in housing assistance awarded to nonprofit organizations nationwide to help finance the construction of affordable housing, as well as provide rental and supportive services assistance for low income seniors.

“We’re absolutely ecstatic to get this grant, primarily because there have been so few dollars made available in the last several federal legislative sessions for low income housing, especially for low income senior housing,” said Les Swindle, community manager for Ed Romero Terrace, the managing entity for EHDOC.

“We’re looking to the city and other funding sources to secure the balance of what’s needed in the next 12 to 14 months, after which construction will start,” Swindle said. He estimated the cost of the project at around $4 million. The 0.62-acre property is already owned by EHDOC.

Ed Romero Terrace is named for former U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Ed Romero, who is the vice president of the EHDOC Board of Directors and a native of Albuquerque. Of 58 EHDOC facilities around the country, the four-story Ed Romero Terrace is the only EHDOC property in New Mexico.

“Our mission is ‘housing with a heart,’ so we’re obviously most interested in taking care of low-income senior citizens, which is why we partnered with HUD to make low-income facilities available across the United States,” Swindle said.

EHDOC was formed in the late 1990s, “at a time when HUD had been mandated by Congress to throw off ownership of residential properties and concentrate on administration,” as well as establish a mechanism for building and supplying new properties for seniors, he said. With the assistance of HUD and other federal funding made available from the city, EHDOC bought the property at Central and Texas SE from the city about 10 years ago and built Ed Romero Terrace.

Under provisions of the federal Housing Act, the grants target low-income people age 62 and older so they can live independently and have access to support services. To qualify they must earn less than 50% of the median income for their area.