PROVIDENCE — When some residents of Upper South Providence heard that a nonprofit developer was hoping to build affordable rental apartments on an abandoned lot at Reservoir and Broad Streets, they cringed.

Upper South Providence, they said, is becoming a social-service and subsidized housing ghetto, a place to pack in the poor from around the city.

“You are saturating a neighborhood that is already saturated with subsidized housing. Fifty percent of our housing is subsidized units. When is it going to stop?” said Balbina Young, the councilwoman who represents the area.

“You have more social service programs in one neighborhood than most whole cities have. …That should not happen. There should be poor people all over the city and all over the state,” she said.

Regardless, Tuesday night the City Plan Commission gave unanimous approval to the project, proposed by Stop Wasting Abandoned Property Inc., a nonprofit developer that seeks to rejuvenate abandoned properties.

Carla DeStefano, executive director of SWAP, said that the project, at Broad and Pine streets on property long occupied by Tire King, will bring new life and moderate-income tenants to a blighted, empty lot.

She said that the apartments, while subsidized, are not Section 8, and that the project is being unfairly maligned. The units are below the maximum density allowed for the size of the lot, she said.

“It’s a very well thought-out project,” she said. “It will be very nice when it’s done.”

The three-story, $13-million building will feature 14,000 square feet on the ground level for commercial condominiums, mostly 700-square-foot blocks available for purchase by small businesses. The top two floors will house 35 rental apartments, mostly one-bedroom with some two-bedroom apartments. The one-bedrooms will rent for $450, and the two-bedrooms for $650, though those prices can be reduced if residents meet certain income guidelines.

The 35-unit building is part of a larger SWAP plan to add 50 total units in eight buildings across the area.

The project has the support of Mayor David N. Cicilline. But residents remain unconvinced, turning out at the City Plan Commission meeting to voice their disapproval for the project.

Peg Votta, who left the area to move to North Smithfield, said that the neighborhood is going to continue to go downhill because of the introduction of more subsidized housing. “It is just packed over there. The drugs are getting worse, the crime is getting worse.”

Neighborhood resident Ken Cabral agreed, saying that the area looks downtrodden, with too many social service agencies and housing units and not enough businesses.

“It looks like a local place where drugs should be sold,” he said.

DeStefano acknowledged that SWAP’s buildings have problem residents, but she said that is in no way unique to its properties in the neighborhood, and that the organization is working with the police to try and improve conditions.

Now that the approvals are in place, construction on the building could start before the end of the year, and is expected to take 12 to 14 months, DeStefano said.