Housing the Homeless

"40 units at Near North will be set aside as supportive housing for persons with special needs"

--developers' website

We've constantly been surprised that so many well-informed people think the NeNo site plan includes forty units of "supportive" housing. In fact, only one-third of the building--fourteen units--would serve people with special needs. The developers have always acknowledged this during the Planning process, and it's documented in the June Planning Staff report.

Thanks to Cindy Pomerleau, we've finally tracked this error to its source--which turns out to be the developers's own website!

As noted previously, the great majority of the units in NeNo will have little or no value to the community. They're supposed to be targeted at working people--but because 3 Oaks wants so much money for the site, they would be more expensive than thousands of existing Ann Arbor apartments.

We hope this web posting is an oversight, not a deliberate attempt to mislead. Many Avalon supporters, including Paul Saginaw of Zingerman's, have argued that the county's Blueprint to End Homelessness justifies blowing away fifty years of planning for our neighborhood. It's past time for Avalon to come clean about just how few homeless people NeNo would house.