Two grants totaling more than $7.3 million approved in Tallahassee will lead to at least two “firsts” in Jacksonville.
The Florida Housing Finance Corp. awarded to Ability Housing of Northeast Florida $7,330,222 to purchase and renovate a 12-unit apartment property in Springfield and to develop Villages on Wiley, a new 43-unit multifamily residential project.
Shannon Nazworth, executive director of Ability Housing, said the agency has completed the groundwork for the projects. All that was needed was funding. The grants are the single largest contribution in the organization’s history, she said.
“We plan to close on both projects by the beginning of May,” she said.
The 12-unit acquisition will provide a new resource in supportive housing — studio apartments for single residents.
Villages on Wiley is the first new construction for Ability Housing.
The organization was founded in 1992 as Grove House with one home for six developmentally disabled adults. In 2004, its mission expanded to focus on the development and operation of affordable rental housing for homeless people, or those at risk of being homeless, as well as adults with a disability.
Ability Housing’s portfolio includes 29 single-family rental unit plus Mayfair Village, an 83-unit apartment community in South Jacksonville; Renaissance Village, a 52-unit community in the Longbranch neighborhood; and Oakland Terrace, a 60-unit apartment community in East Jacksonville.
Ability Housing residents are low-income, earning 80 percent or less of the area median income. Most are very low-income, earning 50 percent or less of the median income, and extremely low-income, earning 30 percent or less. The average annual income of Ability Housing’s residents is $8,800.
When construction is complete, Villages on Wiley in West Jacksonville will provide permanent supportive housing for some of the most frequent users of crisis services.
Residents will be homeless and non-homeless people who require stable housing and support services in order to stop cycling through systems of care including hospitals, social service agencies and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Nazworth said when residents begin moving into the property, it will allow a study of how providing stable housing for the at-risk population can reduce the need for crisis services, such as hospitalization and incarceration.
Jacksonville will be part of the “Solution That Saves” statewide pilot program to gather data for three years concerning cost effectiveness and improved outcomes derived from providing permanent supportive housing to vulnerable members of the community.
“We will be able to determine the genuine third-party cost and conduct a cost-benefit analysis. It’s the first time this data has been collected in Florida,” Nazworth said. “It’s a quantum
leap.”
Dawn Gilman, CEO of the Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition of Northeast Florida, said the pilot program will, for the first time, allow “a look at homeless people who are high utilizers of services.”
Those services can include visits to emergency rooms, incarceration and in-patient drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
“In other communities, it has been shown that if you can get people into housing and then provide case management services, the cost of care goes down,” said Gilman.
A study conducted in Denver concluded that providing stable housing and intensive case management results in savings to the community of $30,000 per year per person served.
Gilman said she’s confident similar results can be achieved in the Jacksonville study. That could allow more efficient use of local social services.
“I believe it will demonstrate that investing in this type of intervention works,” she said.
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