Open Doors Housing and Crossroads recently announced major progress on their separate supportive housing developments in Providence and North Kingstown that focus on ex-inmates and the homeless.
Open Doors, with completed financing arrangements, purchased the former historic Sealtest ice cream plant at 485 Plainfield Street in the city’s Silver Lake neighborhood. It will contain 19 units subsidized as Section 8 and will also eventually hold the office of the non-profit agency. Funding will come from an assortment of sources, according to Sol Rodriguez, executive director. Those sources include R.I. Housing, R.I. LISC, the state NOP housing program, tax credit subsidies, Providence Housing Authority vouchers, Environmental Protection Agency grants to remediate the industrial site, and the city’s commitment of 2011 federal Home funds.
The lengthy process to obtain the building started five years ago, Rodriguez said, and is the first housing program for the 8-year-old nonprofit, which specializes in programs for people coming out of the ACI. Some of those efforts include a drop-in center, policy and legal reforms, literacy, computer and resource training and working on legislative issues.
The Crossroads project will rebuild 58 former Navy Housing on Devil’s Foot Road and construct an additional 46 low to moderate income apartments aimed at current and former homeless families in the town. The first phase foundations have been started and five percent of the units will meet federal disability law.
The multiple town house units will be green certified for its appliances, heating systems, windows and insulation and will help the town meet the state law requiring all communities to have a minimum of 10 per cent of their housing for low and moderate income. North Kingstown currently only has eight per cent, said Karen Santilli, vice president of marketing and development at Crossroads. It is expected that the full development will take three years.
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