Housing Committee Backs City’s Plan to Buy Site

The Housing and Human Affairs Committee has endorsed a plan for the city to buy a former nursing home for AIDS patients for $675,000 and turn it into an affordable-housing complex.

“I believe it’s really an opportunity,” Chairwoman Alice Graves said. “Our kids can go through school here . . . and get a job, but unless they want to live with Mommy and Daddy, they’ve got to live somewhere else.”

The property in question is the former Ahimsa Care Center building at 450 Glenneyre St., a site that has been vacant for about two years.

With $800,000 in a city fund set aside to provide low- and moderate-priced housing, City Manager Kenneth C. Frank requested the special committee meeting Tuesday night to seek the group’s support for the proposed purchase, which will go before the City Council on Feb. 20.

The committee voted 5 to 0 in favor of having the city buy the property. Two of the committee members were absent.

While plans are still in the preliminary stages, Graves said, the city is discussing the possibility of razing the structure and building a new complex of 20 to 25 one-bedroom apartments, perhaps 450 square feet each, that could rent for about $500 per month.

Some of the apartments might be set aside for elderly residents, she said.

“I think, personally, and it was somewhat agreed to, that the use of the land in its present configuration is rather wasteful,” Graves said. “Now is the opportunity to get the land, and now all the work really begins in deciding all of those things.”