Many are now charging market rates, effectively displacing residents who cannot afford to pay more. At Apple Creek Apartments on Third Street and Dutton Avenue, one of the properties to take advantage of the city's bond agreement, the units that for more than a decade were affordable to low-income families are now priced at the market rate. Some 48 residents, many of whom are senior citizens, have had to find housing elsewhere. But with the market skyrocketing, she was losing money. When she heard through a contact in the housing department that a new complex was about to open up, she leaked the information to her residents before it went on the market.
Few developers are now willing to take a chance on low-income housing.
But the closer you get to market rate, the less demand there is. As far as we can see, the demand for subsidized senior housing is huge out there, because they all fill up. Gale Brownell of the Santa Rosa Housing Authority says that 270 low-income housing units in the city were converted to market rate between 1990 and 1998. I think the city is doing a good job in a very difficult market. Not everyone is convinced of that.