‘Something you could be proud of’: Law to provide Windsor Park residents with new homes

Residents of the Windsor Park neighborhood in North Las Vegas, mired for decades in a struggle over sinking ground that damaged homes, may have once and for all found a solution under a new state law signed by Gov. Joe Lombardo last week.

Senate Bill 450, approved by Lombardo on June 16, provides qualified homeowners with a new house of the same size in North Las Vegas, pays off their mortgages and allocates them $50,000 each in restitution to cover taxes, insurance and moving expenses.

The 86-acre housing development, home to about 90 leftover residents, started as a federal housing project for Black residents from 1964 to 1966 but was built over fragile geological faults that sank years later as aquifers lost water, deteriorating the homes to the point many had to be demolished.

Sen. Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, a primary sponsor of the bill, told a group of Windsor Park neighbors Wednesday night that her legislation makes up to $37 million available toward purchasing nearby private land and constructing and building the new abodes.

Of that money, $25 million is expected to come from COVID-19 relief funds, while another $12 million would be pulled from a state housing fund repaid by North Las Vegas over four years, according to the new law.

“So the idea was you were going to get something that you could be proud of, what you should have received in 1964 when you moved over here,” Neal said to a packed room at the Macedonia Baptist Church on Clayton Street.

Windsor Park is bounded by Clayton, Cartier Street, Chamberlain Lane and Evans Avenue, near the North Las Vegas Airport.

“It’s probably going to take about a year to get everything through the process, and we’ll start because we have to go house by house,” the lawmaker said.

Neal stressed that the program is voluntary and any homeowner who does not want to move may remain in their residence. But because the plan is to convert Windsor into public parkland, “those one or two people who decide to stay would be surrounded by a park.”

The law, effective July 1, directs the housing division of the Nevada Department of Business and Industry to oversee a program for those who own a home in Windsor to exchange their residence for a new one constructed “on vacant land adjacent” to the old development, but exactly where is yet to be determined, Neal said.

The division will seek requests for development from a government, nonprofit or other organization to handle building the new single-family homes on stable land that based on a study would not have the same problems of sinking ground, she said.

The new homes must have at least the same number of square feet as the old ones, and the housing division would arrange for the financing to pay off the mortgages that 38 residents have on their places.

The law requires that the $12 million contribution from North Las Vegas goes toward buying land, developing and constructing the single-family homes.

For the 134 former residents of Windsor who moved away after the city offered them one-time payments of $51,500, the bill provides them $10,000 each in restitution.

Another group of 45 people who moved blocks away into homes that soon suffered construction problems, an area known as “baby Windsor,” would get payments of $15,000 each.

Restitution funds are to come from a city bank account kept for Windsor, which has a balance of $2.7 million, and an old interest-earning bond issued for the neighborhood by the Federal National Mortgage Association, according to Neal.

Power, sewer and other connection fees would be transferred, and those who are renting would have their leases passed to the new homes.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.