Taxpayers still support Cincinnati’s vacant English Woods public housing complex, even though no one has lived there for more than two years.

The last residents of the almost 60-acre hilltop site along Westwood Northern Boulevard moved out in the fall of 2005. Yet the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, which owns the complex, gets $235,423 every month for the property from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HUD calls the money an “asset repositioning fee.” Housing agencies all across the country can get it after the government approves demolition and relocation plans.

“It doesn’t make a difference if people are there or not,” said Pete Witte, a member of the authority’s board of directors. “Welcome to the federal government.”

The total for the last nine months: $2,118,807.

“It’s kind of like a phasing-down of their operating subsidy,” explained James Cunningham, director of HUD’s Cincinnati field office. “It’ll go away once the (demolition) project’s off the books.”

Here, the fee kicked in sometime after the 702 English Woods units became empty, when CMHA stopped getting HUD operating subsidies for the complex.

Authority spokeswoman Kelly Kramer wasn’t sure exactly when the fee started coming in, but said the agency definitely has received it every month for all of fiscal year 2007, which started last July.

CMHA is using some of the money to demolish English Woods’ 82 buildings – a process that’s more than half finished, Kramer said. Any money not spent on demolition can be converted to an operating subsidy for other properties once English Woods is completely down. She didn’t know how much money might be left over.

The federal government does not provide money specifically targeted for demolition, executive director Richard Rust said, leaving CMHA to take down the buildings, literally, one at a time. Authority workers are doing some of the demolition when they have free time from other duties.

“That’s the goofy thing,” Witte said. “So you end up having to use whatever dollars you can to scrape together to tear these things down.”

Authority officials planned to seek $7 million from Hope VI, a federal program aimed at turning housing complexes into mixed-income housing, to demolish the buildings.

But by the time a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati on behalf of English Woods residents wound through the courts, the Bush administration had begun phasing out the Hope VI program. Hope VI money was used to redevelop former CMHA properties in the West End into the current City West.

Witte, not a board member at the time, supported residents who wanted to keep the complex open. He’s an activist in Price Hill and the West Side, where many people feel their neighborhoods have been inundated with Section 8 rentals in the wake of the closing of the West End complexes.

Councilwoman Laketa Cole, with then-Mayor Charlie Luken, toured the complex in 2004 and called for an audit of authority spending at English Woods.

Luken, council and U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Westwood, opposed the demolition.

Renovation estimates then said it would take $130,000 per unit to clean up lead paint and upgrade heating and cooling systems. Luken said then it appeared CMHA was waging a “war of attrition” against the residents. The vacancy rate soared over the years, with more than 280 units occupied in early 2004, but 80 remaining by September 2005, when CMHA moved the last of the tenants out.

Cole, now chairwoman of City Council’s neighborhoods committee, recently asked authority officials for a status update. “They said they’re doing the best they can,” she said. “But no, I never thought it would sit this long.”

Until the remaining 34 English Woods buildings are gone or at least there’s a clear timetable for when that might happen, Witte said it’s difficult to talk very much about what might happen to the site.

Some retail developers have expressed interest to him, he said, citing the location’s proximity to the West Side, Clifton and the Hopple Street exit off Interstate 75. He’s also interested in exploring the possibility of donating some of the land to The Seed Foundation, a Washington, D.C. non-profit group that establishes boarding schools for elementary students needing out of bad home situations.

“It probably sits there vacant for a little bit” longer, he said. “Meanwhile, it’s fenced and just having a look of blight.”

About English Woods

English Woods was built between 1938 and 1942. Brick with slate roofs, the buildings held eight to 10 units, each with its own entrance.

By the time it closed, more than 90 percent of the residents were African-American, about 75 percent of the families were led by single women, according to a planning study commissioned by Legal Aid during the residents’ lawsuit. More than half the residents in 2002 were children, the study found. Residents liked the location, they said, in part because of its nearness to downtown and accessibility to the 64 bus line, which traveled from Westwood to Avondale, Hyde Park and Norwood.

English Woods is CMHA’s biggest property still standing. Three other large ones – with about 600 units each – remain in operation: Findlater Gardens and Winton Terrace in Winton Hills; and Millvale, in South Cumminsville..