Senior affordable housing to open in Sonoma in January Senior affordable housing to take tenants in January

Tenants will be moving into the Celestina Garden Apartments – the newly-constructed affordable senior housing complex on Sonoma Highway – sometime next month, according to the leasing office staff.

MidPen, the developers of the affordable one- and two-bedroom apartment project, received more than 250 applications for the 39 apartments which will house around 50 tenants. The leasing office is only accepting waitlist applications at this time. The complex leasing office is located at 200 Dorene Way, behind the Fetters Apartments, also a MidPen development.

Celestina Garden is comprised of 37 one-bedroom units (553-623 square feet) and three two-bedroom units (791 square feet). Qualified senior households (age 62 and above) earning up to 60 percent of the area median income, were eligible to apply. This means that the apartments are reserved for residents falling into low-, very low- and extremely low-income brackets, with rents varying relative to household income. The breakdown of rent limits per unit, based on income and number of members in a household, is laid out in the application.

The vast majority of the one-bedroom apartments will be occupied by one resident, according to the leasing office, and eight of the apartments are reserved for formerly homeless seniors.

Apartments in the three-story complex are renting for $456 to $980 per month for one-bedroom units and $535 to $954 per month for two-bedroom units, slightly lower than the prices originally announced when the project broke ground in September of 2018.

The Highway 12 property boasts several amenities for its tenants, including a community room with kitchen, a fitness center, bicycle storage, elevators, a shared courtyard and a community garden. A total of 56 parking spaces will be available to residents. There will also be many services offered on-site, such as health screening, nutrition workshops, financial courses and benefits assistance. Residents can also participate in “Quality of Life Programming” focusing on cognitive stimulation, social engagement and lifelong learning.

Neighboring the Fetters Apartments, Sonoma Charter School, Vailetti Plaza and several bicycle and pedestrian trails, Celestina Garden was designed to provide “an integrated and vibrant living environment” for its residents. According to the developers, “Celestina will complete the final phase of a master-planned, intergenerational community where people of all ages can live, work, attend school, shop and easily access transportation.”

Like the next-door Fetters Apartments, which opened in 2017, Celestina Garden is being developed by MidPen Housing. Founded in 1970, MidPen was formed as response to the lack of the affordable housing in the Bay Area. In the decades since, the nonprofit claims to have “developed over 100 communities and 8,000 homes for low-income families, seniors and special needs individuals throughout Northern California,” according to its website.

The application and selection process for Celestina Garden was similar to that of the Fetters Apartments, using a lottery system to select candidates from the list of applicants. Applicants then submitted extensive documentation and those who qualified were interviewed by leasing office staff.

Though the development resides in Sonoma Valley, MidPen cannot legally limit the apartments to Sonoma Valley residents, according to what 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin told the Index-Tribune in October. However, Gorin said that she expected that Celestina Garden would mimic the path of the Fetters Apartments, where Sonoma Valley residents and workers are housed in a majority of the units.

Construction on those units started in summer 2015 and residents moved into its 60 apartments in spring 2017.

Waitlist applications for Celestina apartments can be downloaded at midpenproperty.midpen-housing.org/LeasingNow, requested by email from celestinagarden@midpen-housing.org or picked up at the leasing office at 200 Dorene Way; open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Email Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.