Senior housing units expanding

WINSTED — The Winchester Housing Authority (WHA) is planning for an addition to its Chestnut Grove Apartment facility.

Chestnut Grove, built in 1971 at 80 Chestnut St. in downtown Winsted, was constructed with HUD funding. The facility currently has 80 apartments: 60 efficiency units and 20 one-bedroom apartments. The planned addition will house 26 new, roomy one-bedroom apartments.

Following HUD guidelines, applicants will be required to meet gross income limits of $30,000 per year. Providing for medical expenses and certain other deductions from gross income, rental rates would be no more that 30 percent of the adjusted gross income. Differing from Chestnut Grove’s current age restriction of 55, the new addition will require that at least one household member be 62 or older.

Fred Newman, executive director for the WHA, will be making presentations at the Colebrook, Winchester, Barkhamsted and New Hartford senior centers in the coming weeks. He will provide an overview of HUD guidelines and an insight to what the new facility will look like.

As the senior population continues to grow in the region, so have waiting lists at affordable housing facilities. The troubling economic conditions have impacted retiree incomes as well as the younger generation. All of this, in combination with life spans, which increase with each passing year, has had an impact on seniors and the affordable housing stock available to them in the region.

The Chestnut Grove site, since its construction in 1971, has offered not only affordable rents for residents of the area, but a secure place for Mom and Dad to live. HUD maintains the facility in the highest standards. In addition to top-notch maintenance, the on-site housing authority staff sees to it that the secure entry system represents the latest that technology offers. In addition, the appartments are on several northwest transit bus routes, including the Winsted Senior Center across the street. Many residents like the idea of being close to downtown shopping, too.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less