MOUNT VERNON — Neighbors said a low-income senior housing development has no place on their street of single-family homes during a public hearing before the Mount Vernon City Council last week. But affordable housing advocates argued there is nowhere else to build.

On Wednesday, the City Council is scheduled to deliberate and decide whether to grant Senior Council Housing’s requested rezone, which would make way for senior apartments, or to side with city planners and neighbors who say the single-family to multi-family rezone should be denied.

“I am opposed to it. My wife is opposed to it. My neighbors are opposed to it,” Kenneth Naff said at last week’s hearing. “... And I am not against old folks believe me. I am one.”

He said putting low-cost senior housing in his Hillcrest Park area neighborhood would decrease property values, create traffic problems and increase noise.

James Neilsen lives near Mount Vernon Manor, Skagit Council Housing’s first apartment complex for low-income seniors.

“We bought property down the road from the project in ’82 and have lived there since,” Neilsen said. “... Seniors are great neighbors.”

“Traffic is a minimal issue because not very many of them drive,” he said, and his property value has risen steadily.

The project is one of six requests for Comprehensive Plan amendments and rezones that will go before the City Council on Wednesday. It is the only one that city staff recommended be denied.

The reason, said Mount Vernon Senior Planner Elizabeth Higgins, is that multi-story apartments would not blend well with the existing neighborhood. Higgins said there is plenty of property in the city that is already zoned for such a development.

However, she said she did now know whether that land was vacant and for sale or already occupied by apartments.

Skagit Council Housing President Jim VanderMey had an answer to that. He said his organization was prepared to spend up to $1 million to buy property for the proposed development and could find nothing that was in their price range, was near enough to the amenities seniors need or want and already zoned R-4, or multi-family residential.

Instead, Skagit Council Housing purchased the two Blackburn Road lots in question for $650,000 in hopes that the city would grant a rezone.

The City Council is scheduled to meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Police and Court Campus, 1805 Continental Place.