Sawyer Towers For Sale

NBC 4: Years of insufficient funding for local public housing properties is catching up to the facilities. Now, the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority is working to sell or demolish a variety of buildings that house roughly 2,000 residents.

The twin 15-story Sawyer Towers in east Columbus are up for sale. CMHA already started moving residents out and the plan is to empty the towers and the 370 one-bedroom units inside within the next 12 months. “It looks pretty good from the outside, but that just like you, if you had cancer and nobody knew it, you wouldn’t know it until you died, right?“ said Roger Little, a resident of Sawyer Towers.

Many said the lack of federal funding to keep up the property is more than noticeable and moving elsewhere will not be painful—especially with the housing authority’s help. “We actually take people on bus tours. We take them around, showing property in various parts of the county,“ said Dennis Guest, executive director of CMHA.

Guest said the housing authority will not rush tenants out of the towers. In fact, he said CMHA will pay for all moving expenses for the residents as well as utility hook-up costs and the residents who are primarily lower-income families and seniors will receive vouchers to help pay the costs at their new residences. “They’ll be in better units, easier to get to, your costs are down, people are happier,“ Guest said.

The realtor hired by the housing authority to sell the properties has suggested students at nearby colleges might someday call the towers home, but the surrounding neighborhood will remain comprised of public housing units. If a buyer is not located, the towers will be demolished.