New residential units nearing completion at the former Camp Kilmer property in Edison will provide affordable housing and accommodations for homeless families.
“Kilmer Homes promises to be a positive community asset,” Mayor Thomas Lankey said. “These new apartments will comfortably accommodate middle- and lower-income people and families, people with disabilities and people who were previously homeless, including homeless veterans.”
The project is being built on a 6-acre portion of the 23-acre Camp Kilmer property, located along Plainfield Avenue. Kilmer Homes is at the corner of Truman Road and Road 2, at the north tip of the former military base.
Construction is nearly complete on the first of two 60-unit buildings, with tenants set to move in later this month, according to Madeline Cook, executive director of the Edison Housing Authority.
“It could be any day. As soon as we get our [certificate of occupancy], we are all set to go,” she said. “It’s a very exciting thing — we just can’t wait to open our doors and say, ‘Come on in.’ ”
The 120-unit development includes 88 units of workforce housing, 30 units of permanent supportive housing for homeless families and two units for superintendents, according to representatives of Monarch Housing Associates, a nonprofit that specializes in supportive housing and is one of the development partners on the project.
Other development partners are Edison Affordable Housing Inc. and The Alpert Group, a for-profit developer.
The Alpert Group and the Edison Housing Authority will provide ongoing property management services, and Triple C Housing, the supportive-services partner, will provide case management and coordinate support services for the residents who had been homeless. “The people will get whatever kind of support services they need,” Cook said, adding that these could include financial help, coordination of medical care or assistance with running the household.
Sharon Levy of Monarch Housing said tenants are already lined up for the 30 units dedicated to homeless individuals. In January, 153 homeless individuals or families applied for a chance to obtain one of the units, amounting to more than five households applying for each apartment, according to Monarch. The tenants were then determined via a lottery.
For the development to be built, 25 percent of the overall units had to be set aside for the homeless, according to Cook. Fifteen units are being sold to the township in each of the two building phases, she said.
The Edison Housing Authority committed Housing Choice Vouchers, formerly Section 8 rental vouchers, for the 30 units. The vouchers allow the supportivehousing tenants to pay no more than 30 percent of their household income toward housing costs, according to Monarch.
“My hope is that the same type of public-private partnership — which secured substantial state and federal monies to build Kilmer Homes here — will become a model to provide affordable housing in other New Jersey communities,” Lankey said of the project, which is part of the township’s Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) plan.
Veterans and those displaced by superstorm Sandy will be given priority as tenants for all the units, according to Levy. Cook said Edison residents will also get a preference as tenants.
The 88 workforce units are reserved for households with incomes at or below 60 percent of area’s median income, or up to $50,400 in annual income for a two-person household, according to Monarch.
Tenants are lined up for a number of those units, as well.
“Units are currently being assigned,” Levy said.
Opponents of the project cited additional schoolchildren being sent to the township’s overcrowded schools. A previous estimate placed the number of school-age children expected from the development at 43.
Units will have one to three bedrooms, and Township Attorney William Northgrave has said that developments with mixed numbers of bedrooms tend to have more children residing there.
“We don’t have any numbers,” Board of Education President Veena Iyer said of additional students coming from the project. “We don’t even have estimates at this point.”
The school district is slated to eventually build a school facility at the Camp Kilmer site, but Iyer said it is too soon to say whether it would be a preschool or another type of facility.
A community center and a township public works facility are also expected to be built at the Camp Kilmer site.