Spokane Housing Ventures has been awarded a $1.5 million grant for the $27 million plan it's working on jointly with Whitewater Creek Inc., of Hayden, Idaho, to buy the struggling Clare House complex on Spokane's South Hill and to develop about 180 additional units there for families and seniors.

Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco has awarded the grant through its competitive Affordable Housing Program. The grants are made twice a year, and often are used to fill in gaps in available financing for affordable housing projects.

The complex, located on 18 acres on the Palouse Highway, just southeast of the Southgate commercial district, has until now been focused entirely on seniors.

The partners are seeking to buy the property, which currently includes 124 units of affordable senior housing called Clare House Apartments, 22 "bungalow" units called Clare House Bungalow Homes, and a vacant parcel of land designated as Clare House Second Addition, to prevent the properties from being sold separately at trustees' sales. The partners would pay $5 million for the property.

The sale must close before June 30 to prevent the trustees' sales. Meanwhile, the partners have been seeking financing for a project to build 120 apartments for families and 60 units of senior housing.

The partners have applied for $11.3 million in tax-exempt revenue bonds through the Washington state Housing Finance Commission, which held a hearing on the bond issue May 14. The request, which would help fund the $14 million, 120-unit portion of the project, called Clare House Family Apartments, is still in process, says Tia Paycheff, director of the commission's capital projects division. A date for closing on the bonds hasn't been scheduled, she says. Though they haven't provided a cost estimate for the additional 60 units of senior housing, Spokane Housing Ventures said those units, the 120 apartments, and the purchase price total $27 million.

A condition of such bonds is that a percentage of the units be set aside for low-income housing.

Harry Green, who developed the independent-living retirement complex, originally planned a multiphase, 418-unit campus there. The first phase of that project included construction of the Clare House apartment building, as well as a community building and other amenities, owned by Clare House Apartments LP, whose principals include Green. The second phase of work included the construction of 22 bungalow units, which are owned by a separate company named Clare House Bungalow Homes LLC.

In September, the apartment building for seniors there was placed in custodial receivership pending a trustee's sale to satisfy a debt of $3.9 million owed on the property. Trustees' sales have twice been postponed on all three parcels as Green has sought to sell the properties.