Neighbors wary of proposed low-income housing development in Wadsworth

WADSWORTH — Residents are voicing opposition to a proposed 45-unit apartment building for low-income renters being planned by the Medina Metropolitan Housing Authority, which would be the agency's fourth such facility in Wadsworth. The building would be named Santee Landing and constructed at 451 Seville Road. It is slated to be built on 7 acres of vacant land, breaking ground in the spring. Construction will carry a $10.075 million price tag with most of that expected to be financed and with other funding sources including the Ohio Housing Development Assistance Program and federal low-income housing tax credits. At a public hearing Sept. 9 by the Wadsworth Planning Commission, visitors expressed concerns regarding a possible dip in property values, upticks in crime and a sudden influx of enrollment in local schools. Those sentiments carried over into public comments heard Tuesday during a City Council meeting. "There is no support to have it there," said resident Sidney Wagoner. "We just wanted to make sure that you heard our voice. No one is in favor of this. My background is business, so I see job openings around here as growth opportunities for people already living in Wadsworth. Bringing in an influx of individuals to fill those positions can make it so the people already living here won't have those opportunities." Fellow resident Dave Culkins said a petition with 65 signatures opposing the housing development has been presented to city officials. "People moved to Wadsworth for the reason of not having to live around developments like this," he said. "They had lived in areas with developments like this and moved away because of the place that Wadsworth is, the place that Wadsworth sells itself as. I think it's the Wadsworth that everyone who lives here wants and wants to continue to have. If we allow a development like this to come in, we're going to continue to allow developments and it's going to destabilize everything that we have and love." "They're going to overrun the schools," Culkins later added. "The classes are going to be crowded. It's not going to be as easy for our kids, my two young girls sitting here today, to learn. We're inviting that to come in." Recent studies, including one conducted in 2016 by Stanford Business School, have come to conclusions that support and go against residents' apprehensions. Looking at housing built using the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits program, as Santee Landing would be, data from 129 U.S. counties found that neighborhoods with a median income of less than $26,000 saw a 6.5 percent increase in property values within 0.1 miles of the development. However, in neighborhoods with median incomes above $54,000, it data showed that property values decreased by roughly 2.5 percent within the same distance of the housing site. According to the most recent U.S. Census data estimates, which stretches from 2013-2017, Wadsworth has a median household income of $65,917, a per capita income of $31,941, and a 7.1 percent poverty rate. Regardless of median income, the study did not cite any increases in crime due to the installation of low-income subsidized housing. City Public Service Director Robert Patrick said the housing development will again be discussed by the planning commission Monday. "It won't be a public hearing, just the regularly scheduled planning commission meeting," he said. "There won't be another public hearing for comments but I'd say that anyone who has further comments can always send them to our planning director, who distributes that information out to planning commission members. There will be a public comment period at the next meeting but that's really for other issues on the agenda. It's not really meant to be another public hearing comment period." Contact reporter Jonathan Delozier at 330-721-4050 or jdelozier@medina-gazette.com.