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Housing plan worries neighbors
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, Times Staff Writer SPRING HILL -- When William Balaskas moved to Seven Hills in south-central Hernando County about a decade ago, he finally had his dream house. "I couldn't wait to get here," Balaskas said of his three-bedroom, two-bath home on Hook Drive. Just days ago, though, he and his neighbors got a jolt that Balaskas said changed everything. They learned that a 176-unit affordable housing apartment complex is slated to rise adjacent to their heavily deed-restricted subdivision on land they thought was reserved for upscale apartments. "It was quite a shock because we knew nothing about it," said Balaskas, a member of the Seven Hills Community Advisory Committee. "The consensus I took at the last executive meeting this past Wednesday, the people don't want it. We don't need the extra activity there. It's too congested now." Residents of Silverthorn, Pristine Place and the Oaks subdivisions to the north have raised similar concerns about a second affordable housing project planned for Barclay Avenue, across from Silverthorn. "The concern is, do they really think this is the proper development to put in a community where you have half-million-dollar homes?" wondered Mack Harper, who lives in the Oaks and has delayed plans to build a new home in Silverthorn. "The homeowners associations . . . are meeting about it. The consensus is, they don't want that type of development in the immediate vicinity." Two other affordable housing developments are in the works on sites close to Brooksville. As complaints have poured into county government offices, officials have struggled with the proper response. Although they empathize with the worries, leaders said, the county can do little to prevent legitimate private developers from building apartments on land zoned for multifamily use. "There may be competing concerns, and I certainly recognize that," commission Chairwoman Nancy Robinson said. "But the zoning is what steers what is there. If the zoning is appropriate for multifamily, that's what goes there. It would be discriminatory if you start saying, 'I like this person but I don't like that person.' We need to avoid discriminatory activity." Commissioner Chris Kingsley, who lives in Seven Hills, asked several pointed questions about the apartments during a recent commission meeting. He wanted to know how the construction might affect everything from water consumption to property values. Kingsley explained later that his query reflected the issues raised at a Seven Hills Crime Watch meeting, and that they were not indicative of his own opinion about the housing. He said the county is well short of the needed affordable apartments, and he supported their rise. Yet he also backed the community's desire for answers to what he considered legitimate questions. As first presented, the idea of "low-income" or affordable housing conjured pictures of inner-city ghettos to the many people who have escaped big Northern cities, Kingsley said. "Maybe you might want to talk to the people in the community where it's going to go before you plop it down," Kingsley suggested. To Donnie Singer, the county's housing director, the residents' fears amount to little more than the "not in my back yard" syndrome. "I don't think they understand clearly the quality and the type of apartments that are going to be built there," Singer said. He pointed to a series of photos showing white, two-story stucco buildings surrounded by palm trees and lush St. Augustine grass. The same pleasing layout is proposed for Hernando, Singer said, noting that worries about the old public housing found in Northern cities are unfounded. Singer also referred to a market study by Reinhold P. Wolff Research Inc. that concluded Hernando County needed to add about 2,353 affordable apartments to its housing mix by 2005, stating further that the county has a "pent-up" demand. Such housing sets aside apartments for families who earn 35 percent, 50 percent or 60 percent of the median annual household income for the greater Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan statistical area, which also includes Hernando County. That median income was $45,017 in September 2001, according to the American Metro/Study Corp. A first-year public school teacher, who earns $25,600 annually, and an entry level county firefighter-EMT, who earns between $23,524 and $26,000, would qualify to live in the affordable apartments. Singer figured that seniors on fixed incomes probably would fill the bulk of the apartments. "Affordable housing is a cross-section of incomes," Singer said. "Just because they may not have the same income you have doesn't make them undesirable." Balaskas said he received some information from Singer but that it didn't answer all the lingering questions. He has scheduled Singer to speak to the community on April 8 and plans to send fliers to every homeowner to keep them informed on the matter. People in the Oaks, Silverthorn and Pristine Place also plan to keep up the pressure, Harper said. The apartment developer there will not return calls, he said, and misinformation keeps coming. "We are concerned that nobody is out there looking after our interests. We're just going to dig into it and see," he said. "Hernando County has a lot to offer if they'd go ahead and take a decent approach to this. But they just keep allowing things to develop sporadically." -- Jeffrey S. Solochek covers Hernando County government and can be reached at 754-6115. Send e-mail to solochek@sptimes.com.
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