By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
The Salisbury Housing Authority will use most of $1.2 million in federal stimulus money to bring central air-conditioning and new heating to three of its public housing developments.
“It really is a godsend,” Layton Woodcock, executive director of the housing authority, said of money coming from the recently passed American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009.
“We didn’t know how long it would take for all of our apartments to get central air.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is distributing stimulus money to local housing authorities based on a complicated formula tied to capital funding, Woodcock said.
The Salisbury Housing Authority will receive $1,262,071.
Almost $1 million of that is expected to go toward new heating and air-conditioning systems for Civic Park Apartments, Pine Hill Apartments and Linn Lane/Partee Street Apartments.
The gas furnaces in each of those developments also are outdated and need to be replaced. The three apartment developments have never had central air-conditioning and are the housing authority’s only public housing units left without that amenity.
Without the stimulus money, Woodcock said, the housing authority did not know when it would be able to make the improvements.
Some 169 low-income, family apartments will benefit from the HVAC updates.
The stimulus money also will be used to install new windows and security screens at the East Lafayette Street Apartments, which include 64 family units.
“We think that will take all of our money,” Woodcock said of the HVAC and window replacement projects.
Woodcock said the stimulus money has to be obligated for projects within 12 months. The housing authority should have specifications back for its projects in a couple of weeks, and Woodcock said the projects could be bid out separately within 60 to 90 days.
The Salisbury Housing Authority currently has 523 public housing units, not counting 32 tax-credit units for seniors off Lash Drive.
The authority is currently building Carpenter’s Corner ó 22 additional housing units for low-income seniors 55 and older at Old Concord Road and South Shaver Street. Those units, located where Lincoln Park Apartments once stood, are expected to be occupied by early to mid summer.
They represent the first public housing built in Salisbury in 31 years.