Housing Authority Will Demolish 132 Duplexes in Bunnell and Build 272-Unit Apartment Complex in Privatizing Scheme

In the most consequential change affecting affordable housing in the county in 75 years, the Flagler County Housing Authority plans to demolish its 132 public housing duplexes in South Bunnell, seek private investors, and rebuild what it calls Carver Village into a huge apartment complex of 272 apartments in three- and four-story buildings, including an 80-apartment senior-housing building.

Public housing will be privatized as all the units will be turned into Section 8 housing under what the federal Housing and Urban Development department calls “repositioning,” ostensibly to enable more efficient and effective capital investment and maintenance of the properties. HUD would still dispense the Section 8 vouchers, but the vouchers will be attached to the units, not to the tenants. Maintenance would be done by a property manager.

The authority has secured a private developer. The demolition and reconstruction will take place over several years, says Robert Beyrer, executive director of the authority, and will be financed through public-private partnerships. Money from Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency that underwrites public housing, has become “inadequate” to keep the existing structures going, Beyrer said.

“It’s going to take between five and 10 years to complete, given the fact that we’re going to do it in phases, and the funding is competitive,” Beyrer said. HUD is inviting private equity into the deals and pushing for public-private partnerships, either with private developers or with nonprofits. “So we apply for the funding. There’s no guarantee that we will receive it right away. It could take a while. We’re still at the very beginning of this process.”

Existing residents will be relocated with vouchers as the new units are built. They’ll have to find housing on the open market. He did not say whether existing housing units will continue to be repaired and maintained in the meantime. Several units have been getting new flooring and new windows. But money is short.

“The roofs are from 2009, the air conditioning units are from 2014, and we’re getting to the point now where they’re going to all need to be replaced at the same time,” Beyrer said, “and the money that they give us to put back into the property is just inadequate.”

Typically when “repositioning” takes place, the government is required to offer residents whose houses or apartments are being demolished a housing option as they wait for the new buildings to be habitable. The Carver Village plan is all in the conceptual stage, however, with the Housing Authority focused on getting regulatory changes enabling it to build the apartment complex at a much higher housing density in South Bunnell. The conceptual site plan calls for eight three-story apartment buildings of 24 apartments each, and the senior center with 80 apartments. There would be a clubhouse and two pools, and two vast retention ponds would be carved out of existing land to make up for the reduction in permeable surface. 

The Bunnell City Commission in a pair of votes on the second reading of ordinances, approved land-use changes to enable the transformation on Monday evening. The commission approved rezoning the acreage from Single Family-Medium Density Multifamily, allowing for the much higher density.

The proposal drew zero questions from commissioners and zero comment from the public, though there’d been more discussion at first reading.

The proposal was advertised according to law, but in the Observer, whose copies are not quite visible in South Bunnell. The Housing Authority held two community meetings before the item was heard before the city’s planning board and at the commission. Commissioner Dean Sechrist during first reading said he went to one of them and asked for a show of hands from those in favor. “Everybody was in favor,” he said.

Only a handful of people attended, according to former Commissioner Bonita Robinson, a South Bunnell resident who had not been made aware of the first community meeting. Only one resident spoke on the issue at first reading. He favored the change.

“It is our intention to continue to hold public meetings to educate the residents of that public housing site on how we can move this forward,” Beyrer said.

“I think it’s about time a project like this hit Bunnell,” Commissioner David Atkinson said. “The existing Carver Village has exhausted its life cycle.” He said it will be a “win-win for the city and for the residents.”

Commissioner John Rogers had concerns about the relocation of existing families. Like Robinson, he was skeptical about the vouchers that would be handed to residents to find temporary housing on the open market.

“These are real families that have been living there for decades,” Rogers said. “So I would definitely want to make sure that there’s a clear relocation plan for these people. There’s some money to relocate them, but I know housing is a hard market right now to get into.”

HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program includes protections for renters affected by the changes about to befall Carver Village.

The commission spent all of perhaps 30 minutes in total on the land-use items between first and second reading.

Beyrer said the village experiences attrition of about 10 percent a year, and that it has five vacant units now. He hopes to minimize relocations through attrition, but otherwise provide vouchers for those whose houses will be demolished.

The housing and residents affected are along South Bacher, South Anderson, and South Chapel streets. Since they’re owned by the Housing Authority, a federal government agency, none of the properties pay taxes, and the ratio of resident-to-voter is low. The neighborhood is overwhelmingly Black and poor.

The all-white commission hasn’t had a Black commissioner since 2017, when Robinson lost her bid for re-election, and lost another attempt at last March’s election as Grand Reserve, the overwhelmingly white, relatively new and large subdivision in town, has shifted the political center of gravity. In 2017, Robinson lost her seat to a Grand Reserve resident (John Sowell), and when she tried again in last March’s election, she polled third, behind two Grand Reserve residents Sechrist and Atkinson, who now sit on the commission.

When the City Commission entertained a proposal to institute voting districts, which would have ensured an easier road back to representation for South Bunnell, the commission voted it down, 3-2, with Sechrist and Atkinson in that majority.

The 132 housing units that form the Housing Authority in South Bunnell were built in the 1950s. The authority considers them outdated and considers their layout inefficient, even though when built, the thinking was that residents would have more wholesome living conditions if they could have broad backyards and play areas.

“They did not make the most efficient use of the site when they developed it 50-plus years ago,” Beyrer said. “If you’ve driven through the streets back there, you see that there’s a lot of empty space, a lot of empty fields and a lot of unused space.”

He said the transformation of Carver Village is the result of what he described as “repositioning,” a HUD term introduced in the first Trump administration—specifically, in 2018. At the time, successive Congresses had refused to adequately fund public housing, creating a $70 billion backlog of repairs and improvements across the country, as a white paper from the Low Income Housing Coalition summarized. Instead, Congress had authorized the demolition of units. HUD experienced a net loss of 139,000 units between 1995 and 2016, contributing to the housing crisis.

The Biden administration proposed a $65 million infusion for public housing in a bill that cleared the House in 2021, but the money was eliminated from the final version of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Privatization has instead filled in where government dollars have lacked, as is the plan for Carver Village.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now with the funding at HUD, this year and in the coming years,” Beyrer said. “They’re not making this mandatory, but they’re trying to push housing authorities in this repositioning direction.”

“I just have that skeptical feeling, I don’t think it’s going to work the way people think it’s going to work,” Robinson said.

See background material for the land use changes and the future Carver Village here.