Construction is completed on new homes to replace 1940s-era public housing in West Dayton.
Greater Dayton Premier Management and partners welcomed guests last week to tour phase one of the $15.3 million Renew Miami Chapel project. That includes forty-four units in nine buildings, and is part of a larger redevelopment of the aging DeSoto Bass properties.
All of the new homes are affordable, with 20-year project-based rental assistance that allows residents to pay based on their income.
Jennifer Heapy, CEO of Greater Dayton Premier Management, said the organization didn’t want to displace the current DeSoto Bass residents.
“We spent a lot of time working out a plan where as we demolished units, so that we could build this new affordable housing, the residents in the buildings that were demolished were relocated throughout DeSoto Bass," Heapy said. "And then what came with that was a promise that they will have the first right of refusal either to move to Germantown Crossing, which was the new build, or the units that are built right there on DeSoto Bass's property.”
The housing agency is working with HUD on the next phases, with financing and final unit count still being determined.
DeSoto Bass Courts was the first public housing in Dayton. It housed 200 families when it opened in February 1940.
DeSoto Bass Courts was for years the only public housing available in Dayton that would allow Black tenants. It was named after Rev. DeSoto E. Bass, a Black pastor at Wesleyan Methodist Church.
The housing complex grew rapidly to meet the wartime needs of the Department of Defense and nearby Wright Patterson Air Force Base, with more than 1,000 units at its peak — 510 apartments remained after the wartime emergency units were dismantled.
Greater Dayton Premier Management said it is pursuing an Ohio Historical Marker to recognize the site’s history.
