Martin Castillo, executive director of the Edinburg Housing Authority, announced the agency’s newest development for public housing in over 30 years. Thirty-six new units will be built in La Posada Apartments at the EHA office on Sugar Road.
During the Edinburg City Council’s Jan. 17 meeting, Castillo presented the EHA’s annual and five-year plan.
The project will be the first public housing development completely owned by the EHA in the last 30 years.
In an interview with The Rider, Castillo said the money for the project will come from capital fund grants and proceeds collected from the sale of Albores Courts, which was the EHA’s largest housing development.
The new units will be one-bedroom apartments in a three-story building, meaning they will meet the efficiency requirement.
Castillo anticipates the project will cost around $5 million.
“In the private sector, it might be a little cheaper because you can probably control labor, but in our sector, there’s a lot of guidelines that we need to follow,” he said.
The contract for this development was signed Jan. 12, and the estimated timeline for substantial completion of the project is one year.
Castillo said one of the reasons why there had not been any development done in the past 30 years is due to the availability of funds.
“Could there have been more units built prior to me coming in?” he said. “Maybe. Again, it just depends on the availability of funds, the options of funding.”
Castillo added that some obstacles slowed the process for the project’s continuation.
“Due to inflation, the pandemic, you know, that was a challenge, trying to get contractors to bid out the project and want to keep it within budget,” he said.
A ceremony will be held for the new development soon.
During the meeting, Place 1 Councilmember Daniel Diaz asked if private developments take away potential residents from the EHA or if the demand for public housing is high enough that the EHA needs additional developments. Castillo replied the demand is high.
The EHA currently has 325 public housing units. He said for public housing, over 900 people are currently on the waitlist, which closed Dec. 31.
The Housing Choice Voucher program Section 8 is one of the options for people on the waitlist. The HCV program provides assistance in the form of a voucher for rental units chosen by the tenant in the private market, according to the EHA website.
Castillo said the obstacle with the Housing Choice Voucher program is the difficulty of obtaining landlords for private developments since Section 8 is a concept that landlords are not fond of.
“Fair market value, you know,” Castillo said. “Section 8 may not pay the same as in the private industry or in the private market.”
Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr. invited the EHA to participate in the City’s Comprehensive Plan housing component, which has not been used since 2005.
“We’re going to need all the input we can,” Garza said. “That’s going to be the foundational plan that everybody is going to use to address housing.”
In an interview with The Rider, he said he knows the importance of public housing firsthand since he grew up in one himself.
Public housing cannot be provided to everyone on the waitlist at the moment. However, Garza said the data can be documented and sent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for more resources to increase the availability of public housing.
He added that another way the city can help people in need of public housing is by providing other resources.
“For example, workforce training, so that they can get, perhaps, employed with higher pay,” Garza said. “Then, they will be able to afford maybe even owning their own home at some point.”
