Affordable housing community for seniors boosts St. Pete neighborhood

Nearly 10 years after the Edward White Hospital in St. Petersburg’s Kenwood neighborhood shut down, local dignitaries gathered Aug. 27 at the site to see it start coming back to life.

The gathering was for the ceremonial groundbreaking at the community hospital, which is about to undergo a $29 million transformation into an affordable housing facility for seniors.

But for many of those who showed up to mark the occasion, the project was more than a celebration of the start of a construction project. It was the rebirth of a valued community asset that had touched them personally and now will help others.

Photo by Mark Wemple

"When I say that this hospital saved my life, it did, because I would not be standing here if it were not for those physicians,” says Pinellas County Commissioner René Flowers, who was treated at Edward White for a medical emergency.

“So, for the seniors who will be moving in here, you are saving their lives.”

The Edward White Hospital was a community staple for 38 years before its then owner HCA Florida closed it late in 2014.

It sat vacant along 9th Avenue until about three years ago, when the St. Petersburg Housing Authority bought the property for $5.1 million.

Michael Lundy, the housing authority’s president and CEO, says when the organization first looked at the property leaders saw it provided an opportunity to build something that could be transformative. “We were really fortunate,” he says.

Construction is expected to take about two years and, when complete, the six-story, 121,000-square-foot former hospital will have new windows, doors, paint and landscaping as well as updates to make it comply with Americans with Disabilities Act code requirements.

Inside, the building’s first floor will include a lobby dining hall, a catering kitchen, a mail room and bike storage. There will also be a community room, computer lab and fitness center.

And because the property is adjacent to Booker Creek Park, residents will have access to walking trails and park amenities.

The building will have more than just housing: SPHA will move its headquarters into the building and there will be a clinic run by healthcare provider Evara Health.

Of course, there are challenges — and limitations — that come with buying and renovating an existing property.

When dealing with an older property you have to consider the plumbing may not work and has to be replaced or that there may be issues with the wiring, says Lundy. And, often, you don’t know there are problems until, well, it doesn’t work.

Image via Wannemacher Jensen Architects

Sometimes it’s more cost effective to build from the ground up, he says.

That said, the reality is when you are charged with building affordable housing, you have to do the best with what you have.

“If you’re familiar with affordable housing in St. Petersburg, there are very few properties available for purchase,” Lundy says. In this case “we were looking for opportunities where we could purchase and reimagine a property to fill our affordable housing goals.”

SPHA currently provides “quality, sustainable housing opportunities for approximately 4,000 qualifying low-income households.” It does this through three programs: Public Housing, Affordable Housing and Housing Choice Vouchers.

But the need far outweighs what the agency can do and as housing prices continue to rise the issue will only get worse.

Lundy says that right now there are 11,000 families waiting for housing vouchers and “we’re not ever going to be able to serve those families.”

He says the authority can probably serve a little under 1,000 of those families each year and “With 11,000 people on the waiting list it could be 10 years before we got to all those. Of course, in that time span, their lives are going to change. They’re going to move around. Unfortunately, we’re going to lose some.”

“That gives you some idea of the unmet affordable housing need.”

According to the Florida Housing Coalition’s annual Home Matters report, the state has 24 affordable and available rental units for every 100 extremely low-income renters, people whose income is at or below 30% of the area median income.

And while efforts are being made to address the problem with several affordable housing projects underway in the city and several more planned, the coalition says “no community in Florida provides enough housing to support this group, which is primarily made up of low-income workers, retirees and people with disabilities.”

The need is so great for seniors in St. Petersburg that when the Edward White Campus is complete, SPHA will open the waiting list for a week and it expects to receive 500 applications for the 71 available units in that time.

“If we kept the waiting list open an indefinite time frame,” says Lundy, “we would probably get thousands.”