Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin could not overstate the importance of Thursday’s groundbreaking for 1449 Senior Estates.
“This is about something that we have never seen in Aurora before,” he said. “We’re not going to be scared to do the right thing.”
That right thing, the mayor said, is helping the Aurora Housing Authority provide affordable housing in the city. That was underscored by breaking ground on 1449 Senior Estates, which will have 70 units of affordable housing for seniors, being built on 12 acres where the Jericho Circle housing complex, known at one time as Westwood, once stood.
But officials stressed that the 50 units in 25, one-story duplexes, and 20 more units in one-story single-family residences, will bear no resemblance to the troubled housing complex that once stood at 1449 Jericho Road.
“This will change the public perception of what we can and will offer,” said Joe Grisson, the Aurora Housing Authority board president.
In addition to the living units, 1449 Senior Estates also will have a clubhouse, on-site management offices, a media center, fitness club, pickleball courts and an outdoor community area.
The active senior development will be limited to residents aged 62 or older, with income eligibility of $15,000 to $45,000 a year.
Ralph Jordan, Housing Authority director, said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, already has issued 70 vouchers for the development, meaning seniors will only pay 30% of the rent to live there.
The senior housing is being developed by a group that includes the Aurora Housing Authority, the Northern Lights Development Corp. – which is a not-for-profit arm of the housing authority – and a limited partnership of investors.
The partnership is investing $23 million in private money raised from Bank of America, the National Equity Fund and IFF, officials have said. The latter two are not-for-profit firms that specialize in investing in public and neighborhood projects.
Jim Peters, of Aurora Housing Development Consultants, representing the developers, said the development is based on the philosophy that “all our citizens deserve an affordable, decent housing choice.”
And officials said Thursday this is just the start. Peters said that “based on our performance here,” developers can convince their partners “to invest in other areas of Aurora.”
More Top Picks Best Immersion Blenders
That echoed Grisson’s words that 1449 Senior Estates “is only the beginning.”
“There’s more to come,” he said. “We advance to a new narrative of what public housing is from this day forward.”
Performance wasn’t always the Aurora Housing Authority’s strong point. As recently as 2017, the authority was rated by HUD as an under-performing agency, an agency Grisson described as “troubled.” But shortly after hiring Jordan as director in 2019, HUD’s rating of the authority turned completely around, to a high-performing agency.
“This had never been a high-performing agency before,” Grisson said. “It enabled us to start what you see now, this development.”
Thursday’s groundbreaking event was dotted with current and past residents of Aurora public housing, including Michael Simington, now the director of the Joliet Housing Authority, which helped Aurora get its rating up and provided the model for 1449 Senior Estates; Clayton Muhammad, the city’s chief communications officer, as well as its equity and inclusion director; and Irvin himself.
Irvin admitted that when Jordan first came to him with the plans for 1449 Senior Estates, he was skeptical. He favored scattered site public housing instead of housing complexes, and told Jordan that now that he was mayor of the entire city, he needed to focus on market rate housing “that brings in revenue.”
But he said after thinking about it, Irvin told Jordan that without public housing, Irvin, his mother and siblings “would have been homeless.”
“There is a whole group of people who need that housing,” the mayor said. “I cannot be scared of providing that affordable housing.”
Jordan told the crowd that one of the key changes at the Housing Authority was the philosophy.
“We’re not here to judge people, we’re not here to categorize people,” he said. “We’re here to help people.”