Nearly 300 elderly, disabled, and veteran tenants surprised by sale of their Camden County apartment complex

The prospect of new ownership for an affordable-apartment complex in Barrington has taken tenants and local officials by surprise and is fueling efforts to find new homes for nearly 300 people.

Joan Brodowski, who has called Barrington Mews home for three years, said she is struggling to find a new apartment.

“Everywhere we [tenants] go, there’s a waiting list of two to 10 years,” she said. “We can’t wait two to 10 years.”

Built with federal funds in 1994, Barrington Mews consists of four multistory buildings. There are a total of 284 apartments, including studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms, and the complex sits on a quiet stretch of Reamer Drive near Clements Bridge Road in Barrington, a Camden County suburb of 7,000.

To be eligible to live there, residents must meet income and age restrictions. Most are elderly, people with disabilities, or both; at least 10 are veterans. The complex is owned by the American Affordable Housing Group and overseen by AAH Management in Voorhees.

A company representative did not provide a comment.

Brodowski was among about 50 Barrington Mews tenants who pleaded for help Tuesday during an emotional meeting of the borough council.

“We are doing everything we can,” Mayor Kyle Hanson told the crowd in council chambers. “This [situation] came to us as abruptly as it did to people who live at the Mews.”

Details of the sale, including the identity of the purchaser of the property, are not yet available, the mayor said.

A new owner is expected to take possession of the property in February, and tenants will be able to remain in their apartments at current rents until their one-year leases expire.

Senior Citizens United Community Services (SCUCS), a Camden County nonprofit, is interviewing Mews tenants to determine which are most immediately vulnerable due to the duration of their leases or other factors.

Few if any of those existing tenants would seem likely to afford market-rate rent.

“One-bedrooms at the Mews are from $510 to $710 but would be between $1,550 and $1,675 at current market rates in Camden County,” said Linda Van Sciver, a housing navigator at SCUCS.

Dale Keith, chief financial officer at SCUCS, said: “Elderly or disabled people may not be tech savvy and may need help finding the housing opportunities that are out there. Linda is helping us work as a liaison between people in need of housing and people who have housing.”

In addition to SCUCS and other nonprofits, Barrington is networking with federal, state, and county officials to help place Mews residents, said Hanson and council member Melanie Mercado-Miller.

“Housing is a basic right, like food,” Mercado-Miller said. “The lack of stable, affordable housing is a public health crisis.”

According to one estimate, 1,410 housing projects like Barrington Mews were built in New Jersey in the early 1990s using the Low-Income Tax Credit program established by the Reagan administration.

Many of the 30-year mortgages on these properties are being paid off, sunsetting the affordability requirements — and allowing owners to sell in the currently robust market for multifamily housing.

“We share everyone’s disappointment” in the projected loss of 284 affordable apartments in Barrington, said Melanie Walter, executive director of the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA).

She said the agency was interested in working to preserve the property as affordable before it went on the market earlier this year.

“It’s disheartening to lose them,” said Walter, adding that mortgages on about 11,000 affordable units statewide will have been paid off during the 2020s. Preserving those units as affordable would be far cheaper than having to replace them, she said.

”Seniors are being marketed out of housing due to inflation, and the housing shortage,” said Mercado-Miller.

Keith cited a per-unit increase in the value of apartment buildings in New Jersey in the last four years — from $100,000 per apartment in 2019 to $145,000 in 2024.

“Owners can just cash out,” he said.

During Tuesday’s council meeting, Barrington Mews tenants said they can’t understand why they weren’t advised earlier that their homes were on the market.

“My family has said to me, ‘Look, you’re not going to be without a place to live,’” said Jackie Shaw. “But what about other people in here, who’ve been here for years and don’t have families nearby?”

Said Hanson: “We hope we can get the residents some kind of sliver of good news. But we can only promise to work as hard as we can.”