Carteret, NJ – Mayor Dan Reiman has announced that all housing units at “The Lisicki Building,” Carteret’s first veterans’ apartment building, are now 100% occupied.
The project, completed in 2011, was dedicated in honor of past National Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Commander George Lisicki, an advocate of a number of nationwide programs and services, a Carteret resident, and a veteran of the Vietnam War.
In early 2010, Mayor Reiman and Finance Chair Jorge Diaz announced that Carteret had been awarded $352,000 in federal HOME funding by the Middlesex County Public Housing Agency’s Office of Housing and Community Development, for the construction of the building. The development project has been overseen by the Carteret Housing and Development Corporation (CHADCO), a Borough 501c3 non-profit corporation.
The project has represented another stage in the Reiman administration’s continuing efforts to revitalize the Washington Avenue Redevelopment Area. The structure at 22-24 Washington Avenue houses four 2-bedroom units, each ADA adaptable, including one that also has an exterior wheelchair lift.
The project has received particular recognition in Carteret for meeting specific needs in the areas of affordable housing for veterans, and has been celebrated for its incorporation of “green” design standards. Plans have called for the inclusion of 5 solar panel arrays that provide 1.5 KW of power, or roughly 70-80% of electric use, to each apartment, along with two 80-gallon solar powered hot water systems.
Mayor Reiman said, “We’ve taken advantage of a number of county and federal initiatives that have allowed us to make provisions wherever possible for green technological enhancements – retrofits that make sound financial sense and which have a positive impact on the environment. There are many benefits to our Veterans’ Housing project, not the least of which have been the implementation of state-of-the-art, energy conserving measures.”
Mayor Reiman added. “It’s a great pleasure to see some of our military veterans benefitting from this project. It has been a priority of this administration to ease some of the pressure experienced by residents vulnerable to the rising cost of living in urban New Jersey, and to ensure that our returning heroes, our veterans who may be making a transition from service, are not left without practical housing options.”
