unRavel

Fruitville affordable housing plan on life support

Bird's eye view of "Village Project," a proposed apartment complex on eight acres owned by Harvey Vengroff at 2211 Fruitville Road, Sarasota. SUBMITTED BY Nelson B. Roy, Architect

The plan to build cheap new apartments on Fruitville Road is hanging on by a thread after shit got so real at the City Commission’s hearing on the project Monday night.

After city leaders proposed a rule that the city be allowed to make “health and safety inspections” at the proposed 393-apartment property at 2211 Fruitville Road, Vengroff stood up from the back row of the commission chambers and told the commissioners the project was over.

**Gif does not represent video of actual meeting, duh.

He walked out, and many of his more than 50 supporters followed him as commission members looked on, stunned.

The meeting descended further into chaos from there, with boos and shouting from supporters miring the commission’s debate about what to do next.

City leaders scrambled to pick up the pieces Tuesday morning and plan to meet with Vengroff on Wednesday to discuss the stipulations.

In short, Vengroff and his cronies are pissed the city would ask for inspections that are routine at Section 8 housing or for other programs that receive government support, because the planned property isn’t and won’t be part of any of those programs, he says.

It would be unprecedented for the city to impose such inspections on a strictly private property.

However, inspections of low-income housing participating in government programs are done in exchange for the government’s financial support, city leaders counter.

Now the city ain’t making a financial contribution, but they were considering the approvals needed to get the project off the ground as a form of in-kind subsidy, they said Tuesday. Ergo, they wanted inspections in exchange.

Vengroff won’t have any of that.

“Would you want someone coming into your house like that?” Vengroff said Tuesday afternoon. “Just because you’re poor, you have to say they can come into your house? That’s bullshit.”

“We have no compromise for that,” he continued. “We don’t wanna compromise people’s apartments just because they’re not rich.”

During the madness Monday night, the commission voted 3-2 to include the inspections. Amid the Jerry Springer-esque crowd in the back of the chambers, the commission then voted to punt the whole debacle to its next meeting.

Despite all this, the City Commission pretty much unanimously agreed they’d like to support the project, which is the first large-scale affordable housing opportunity they’ve had to consider.

Now, if Vengroff and city leaders can agree about the inspections, the commission is set to reconsider all this stuff on May 16.

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