State Sen. Don Davis shakes hands with U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield before the presentation of HUD grant funding for the ARISE apartments on Best Road on Wednesday.
photos by Willow Abbey Mercando/the daily reflector
Architect Wayne Stogner gives a design presentation about the 20 unit apartment complex for youth aging out of the foster care system during the presentation about the ARISE project on Best Road on Wednesday.
Butterfield speaks during the presentation of the federal funding for the ARISE apartment complex. Architect Wayne Stogner, right, gives a design presentation about the 20 unit complex for youth aging out of the foster care system.
State Sen. Don Davis shakes hands with U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield before the presentation of HUD grant funding for the ARISE apartments on Best Road on Wednesday.
photos by Willow Abbey Mercando/the daily reflector
Architect Wayne Stogner gives a design presentation about the 20 unit apartment complex for youth aging out of the foster care system during the presentation about the ARISE project on Best Road on Wednesday.
Willow Abbey Mercando
Butterfield speaks during the presentation of the federal funding for the ARISE apartment complex. Architect Wayne Stogner, right, gives a design presentation about the 20 unit complex for youth aging out of the foster care system.
A 20-apartment complex for youths exiting the foster care system is expected to open next fall, but officials said the project will need to seek additional funding on top of $2 million already granted from federal funds.
Wayman Williams, executive director and CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Greenville, said Wednesday that work could begin as early as Jan. 1 on the project dubbed ARISE, a development that will cater to people age 18-24 who are at risk of homelessness after they age out of foster care. It is being funded in part by a $2,085,540 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The complex will be located at 2818 Best Road off of Bs Barbeque Road near the Medical District. It will consist of two buildings that will offer one or two-bedroom apartments. The people who are housed at ARISE will have access to on-site counseling and other resources, as well as a staffer who lives at an apartment on the premises, according to the project’s architect Wayne Stogner of Stogner Architecture in Rockingham.
On Wednesday, Williams and other local leaders converged on the site to celebrate the grant and hear from U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, who said the project was his top priority out of nine projects in the 1st Congressional District of North Carolina to receive the grant funding.
Butterfield presented Williams with the check for $2 million. The congressman called the ARISE complex a “small step” in the right direction toward repairing a national crisis of homelessness brought on by a lack of affordable housing.
“Homelessness is getting to be a pervasive pandemic,” Butterfield said Wednesday. “You go out to Oakland, California, go to Denver, some of these other places I’ve been, you see not just adults who have psychological and mental issues, but you have children who are living under bridges, children living in the backseat of cars, pickup trucks and wherever else they can find a place to rest their head.”
Butterfield was joined at the ceremony state Sen. Don Davis and representatives for U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr and U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy.
Williams said that the project is the only one in the nation developed and designed for foster care recipients and is expected to take fewer than 12 months build. The grant funding accounts for about two thirds of the expected $3-3.5 million cost of the complex.
The housing authority will continue to seek other funding, Williams said. It previously received HUD funding from for the Foster Youth to Independence initiative, which provides rent vouchers for youth under the age of 25 with a history of child welfare involvement.
Williams said that while FYI provides the vouchers, young struggle to find housing that will accept them.
“It is one thing to have a voucher or have housing assistance and it is another thing to have housing,” Williams said. “Sometimes they cannot find that housing or sometimes that housing is not available for them for various reasons. This project allows us to not only build the housing but to eliminate some of the barriers they are going to ... face.
“We want to help them also have successful outcomes.”
Each year 19,000 youths emancipate from foster care according to Shanetta Moye, deputy executive director and COO of the housing authority. She said those young people enter adulthood alone and without economic support from family or extended family. She said 25 percent of that group experience homelessness upon emancipation.
Monica Daniels, city councilwoman of Greenville’s District 1, said that as a social worker she is excited to have a program serving “those who some have thrown away.”
Janis Gallagher, Pitt County manager, said that Pitt County’s Department of Social Services will be collaborating with the housing authority on the project. DSS swore in its new director, Sharon Rochelle, on Wednesday.
Gallagher called housing a core need for Pitt County and said the ARISE project will be a “hand up” for people transitioning out of foster care.
