Sanford leaders to vote on 80-unit senior housing project

Sanford is moving ahead with Harwick Place, an 80-unit affordable senior housing project planned for six acres off West 10th Street near Mulberry Avenue, the site of former Section 8 public housing. The apartments are designed for residents age 55 and older with incomes below 80% of area median income, making the proposal one of the city’s clearest tests of how much help Sanford can give fixed-income seniors facing higher rents.

Seminole County commissioners approved the rezoning ordinance needed for the project, clearing the way for construction. Work is expected to take about a year and a half once it begins, although no start date has been announced.

For Sanford, the project carries immediate local stakes because affordable senior housing is one of the hardest types of housing to find in a fast-growing county. Eighty units will not solve the shortage on its own, but it would add a meaningful block of lower-cost apartments for older residents who often cannot absorb the kind of rent increases seen in the private market.

The site choice also matters. Harwick Place will rise on land that once held public housing, giving the project a direct link to the city’s earlier housing policy. The Sanford Housing Authority says it has demolished its public housing sites and is now developing new housing opportunities in the city, a shift that gives Harwick Place broader significance than a single building proposal.

That broader strategy is already visible in Georgetown Square, formerly known as Redding Gardens, a 90-unit senior facility for income-qualified residents who are at least 55 years old. Taken together, the two developments show Sanford replacing older public-housing-era land use with newer senior housing geared to fixed-income residents.

The project also fits into Seminole County’s wider housing work. The county’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee reviews land-development regulations and the county comprehensive plan, while Community Development programs continue to use HUD and Florida Housing funding for housing activities, along with infrastructure, public services, homeless services and economic development.

Recent efforts have ranged from large-site redevelopment to smaller neighborhood projects. In Sanford, Leadership Point became the county’s first affordable housing subdivision funded by the American Rescue Plan Act and the first Seminole County subdivision built by Habitat for Humanity. Harwick Place now adds another layer to that mix, as city and county leaders keep weighing density, neighborhood fit and the need to keep longtime residents housed in the community.