Tusayan Low Income Housing May Face Additional Challenges
April 24, 2015
For years Tusayan and its business partner Stilo have been singing the praises of low income housing now slated for 20 acres on the Kotzin property. There is only one problem, no one has created the legal framework to make home ownership possible.
That’s why the Town Council on April 22nd called upon Town Attorney William Sims to research the idea. While there are housing authorities in Arizona, they all address low income rental housing, not home ownership.
Why this was not addressed sooner is vexing given this was the selling point for Stilo’s environmentally damaging development project. In either case the Town Attorney has his orders. Mayor Bryan said, “The initial thing that they’re going to need to do is identify, most of the other housing authorities they dealt with are primarily on a rental or lease basis. So they are going to need to identify under state statutes the areas that would apply for the sale of property and ownership.”
Currently, it’s unclear if a housing authority has the authority to sell housing. Bryan said a ‘housing authority’ may not be medium to carry out the objective. He wants Sims and his legal team to do the research and come up with suggestions and options. “It may be a housing authority that processes certain things. It may be a trust. I don’t know, it could be an igloo. We don’t know what’s it’s going to be right now,” Bryan added.