Ground Broken On 'Fully Affordable' Monarch Apt. Homes In West River

NEW HAVEN, CT —Tuesday ground was broken, ceremoniously, for The Monarch Apartment Homes, a fully affordable residential building on Derby Avenue in the West River neighborhood.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, developer Honeycomb Real Estate Partners, and other state, city, and community leaders for donned hardhats and held ceremonial shovels on the site of the new building that replaces the abandoned New England Linen company, built in 1900 and previously known as Monarch Cleaners.

The plan for the 1.77-acre site includes razing the existing structures, remediating environmental contamination, and building a fully affordable housing development consisting of 64 below market rent apartments with amenity space and parking for residents. The rents of the 1, 2, and 3-bedroom apartments will be set at various levels affordable to residents earning at or below 80% area median income (AMI) (4 units), 60% AMI (47 units), and 50% AMI (13 units).

Funding sources for the $27 million development involve a mix of state, local, and private funding. This includes a federal low-income tax credit via the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (4%), a $500,000 brownfields grant made available via the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and a $500,000 allocation in municipal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding.

Since 2020, over 2,000 new housing units have been built in the Elm City and an additional 3,500 new units are currently in the pipeline, of which an estimated 40 percent are affordable.