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Delaware's Rep. Castle Honors Legacy of Leon Weiner
Leon N. Weiner & Associates' award-winning Village of Eastlake neighborhood renewal project received high praise earlier this month from Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.).
“Less than a decade ago, the Wilmington, Del. neighborhood now known as Eastlake was home to some of the highest per capita drug and crime rates in the nation,” Castle said. “All of this has changed since Leon N. Weiner & Associates came in with an innovative renewal plan to construct new homes at below-market rates for neighbors.”
The 90, three-bedroom for-sale units in the project won Affordable Housing Finance magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award for the top affordable homeownership project in the country last year.
Sixty-two of the homes are townhomes with 1,360 square feet of living space and the remaining are 1,650-square-foot duplexes.
Priced approximately $20,000 lower than comparable homes in the neighborhood, the homes were reserved for households with widely varying incomes — as low as 60% of the area median income to as high as 115%. A majority of them — 59 homes — were reserved for households earning between 26% and 80% of the area median.
The project also includes 70 rental units.
Castle said that he had known and worked with Weiner while he was alive. The company was founded in 1949.
“He recognized that people from every walk of life, regardless of economic circumstances, share a common need and dream of having a place to call home,” said Castle. “His hard work and dedication to such a cause helped put thousands of people of modest incomes in homes.”
He added that, “Leon’s legacy not only lives on, but thrives in the company today.”
For information on workforce housing resources available from NAHB, e-mail Blake Smith at NAHB, or call him at 800-368-5242 x8583.
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