State asks housing authority to take over Academy Hill
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER
The Nantucket Housing Authority, the overseer of the subsidized Miacomet Village units, has been approached by the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency to consider taking over ownership of the Academy Hill senior citizen apartments. While it is still uncertain whether the Nantucket Housing Authority is allowed to own a mixed income residential property, it is a situation it would look favorably upon.

COURTESY OF NANTUCKET HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION The Nantucket Housing Authority is investigating whether it is permissable for it to own the Academy Hill senior citizen apartments after being approached by the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency about taking over the mortgage on the building.

"We are inquiring first with the state Department of Housing and Community Development which oversees public housing authorities," said NHA executive director Renee Ceely, explaining that housing authorities are permitted to manage mixed income projects, but she is unsure if ownership is allowed. Mixed income, such as at Academy Hill, is where some units are subsidized and others are rented at market value. The Nantucket Housing Authority is a public entity but not a town department.

"We're just starting our investigating now," she continued. "The NHA has a serious interest in acquiring the general partnership interest in Academy Hill to preserve it. Subject to resolving some of our legal issues we will be doing the typical due diligence."

Ceely added that during the due diligence stage the Nantucket Housing Authority intends to have a financial analysis done on the 27-unit Academy Hill building to determine if it is fiscally feasible to refashion some of the market price apartments into subsidized units. There are currently 12 voucher apartments for which tenants pay 30 percent of their gross income for rent with the balance paid by the state.

"It's a budgetary question," said Ceely, noting that if the NHA becomes the general partner of Academy Hill it will take over the existing $1,968,301 mortgage held on the building by the MHFA.

Tom Farmer, with the MHFA's corporate communications office, explained that Academy Hill has been managed by Academy Hill Associates LP, listed at the Nantucket Assessor's office as owner of the building. The land beneath it is owned by the town and the town and the management company entered into a long-term lease that still has about 50 years to run.

The principal of Academy Hill Associates, Robert Keene, died approximately a year ago, and after he had fallen into default on his loan through the MHFA. The MHFA in 2000 filed a Superior Court civil suit that is still pending in Suffolk County over the default. After Keene's death the responsibility for the mortgage went to his estate, Farmer said, and now the MHFA is searching for a resolution to the matter through its approach to the Nantucket Housing Authority.

The MHFA is a quasi-state/public agency that was created by the legislature in 1966 to be a selfsupporting, independent public authority charged with increasing affordable rentals and for-sale housing in Massachusetts. The MHFA has its own board of directors and is self-financed through loans made through its office. The funds go into a pool to create affordable housing loans.

Originally a private wooden school built in 1856, the three-story brick Academy Hill public school at 4 Westminster St. opened for grades one through 12 in 1929. The school closed in December 1978. In 1986, after extensive interior renovations,

it became senior citizen housing. I