Juneau residents temporarily relocated during affordable housing renovations
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Renovations are underway for two affordable housing complexes in Juneau. Residents say the upgrades are sorely needed but the transition has been challenging.
Annett Ritter has lived in the Coho Park Apartments since 2021. The Section 8 affordable housing complex, which is federally subsidized, is in the Mendenhall Valley, near the former Floyd Dryden Middle School. Ritter said her apartment has had a host of issues with leaking, heating and mold since she moved in.
“Once a week I had to wash my cabinets down because they would get a white mold on them,” she said. “The same thing with my dressers, my desk.”
Ritter’s apartment is one of the first being renovated – work began earlier this summer.
Steele Properties bought Coho Park Apartments and Chinook Apartments, which is near Glacier Cinemas, in April. The Denver-based real estate investment company intends to gut and upgrade all 116 units within the two properties.
According to the City and Borough of Juneau’s parcel viewer, the previous owners of both properties were listed as companies. The Alaska business license database shows those companies were owned by Donald Madsen and Henry Tiffany.
Ritter’s daughter, Skye Ritter, also lives in Coho Park Apartments with two kids and is getting her apartment renovated at the same time. Skye Ritter has lived there for more than a decade, and said that under the previous owners, getting maintenance work done was difficult in the past couple of years.
“Around here, like, your option is try to work with your landlord, try to fix the things you can fix on your own, or go spend $3,000 to rent somewhere else,” she said.
She said her family went more than a year without a fridge or oven because of it.
Toni Tadesse-Carmouche is the director of operations for the Monroe Group, a management company for affordable housing properties. The Colorado-based company is managing the Juneau complexes for Steele Properties. She said the company is in the process of completely reworking the apartments.
“They’re insulating the underbelly of the units and installing cabinets, new flooring, new light fixtures, new plumbing fixtures, new bathrooms, just making it a really, really nice place where people can be proud to call home,” she said.
Tadesse-Carmouche said the goal is to improve the overall quality of life for low-income residents in Juneau.
“We were fully aware of that when we purchased the properties, they were distressed and would truly benefit from the level of renovation that we are putting into the site,” she said.
Between the Coho Park Apartments and Chinook Apartments, Tadesse-Carmouche said about 200 residents will have their apartments renovated. Each unit takes roughly a month of work. She said residents have a couple of options on where to stay while their apartments are redone.
They can stay in alternative housing covered by the property manager, which include vacant units within the complexes or hotel rooms. Residents can also stay with other people and get a stipend for the month they are out of their homes.
Annett and Skye Ritter chose the alternative housing and are living in a vacant unit. And though both say the renovations are needed, the process has been challenging. Annett Ritter is staying with her daughter and two grandkids in the smaller unit while their homes are being renovated.
“We have a one bedroom and a three bedroom shoved into a two bedroom with four people and there’s not much space because all of our boxes and furniture is taking up all the space,” she said.
She and her daughter are happy to be able to get the renovations done, even if it means dealing with tight living quarters for the month they’re expected to stay there.
Tadesse-Carmouche said the Monroe Group hopes to finish renovating the interior of Coho apartments this year and to start on Chinook interior renovations next spring.