From a House to a Village
Ground breaks on the Villages at Samaritan House

Late this summer, ground broke on the long-awaited Villages at Samaritan House development. Located on fourteen lots surrounding Samaritan House’s current site at 929 Hemphill St. in Fort Worth, the new affordable housing community will replace blighted structures with multi-level apartments, designed within the community’s new ‘Urban Village’ standards.

The Villages at Samaritan House will expand the current Single Room Occupancy (SRO) facility from fifty-two to sixty units, while also developing sixty-six new apartments in separate buildings. The apartments will range in size form one to three bedrooms, expanding Samaritan House’s current capacity by more than two hundred percent.

Slated to open to the public in late summer of 2006, the Villages development will mark the first time in the organization’s fifteen-year history that couples and families with children could receive services together. Previously, all services were limited to individuals over the age of eighteen, due to SRO housing limitations. The new construction will also include community green spaces and play areas, a community room, expanded computer facilities and other common areas.

“It’s a challenging time to expand,” says Steve Dutton, Executive Director of Samaritan House. “But if we waited for the perfect time to expand and meet the needs of the community, we’d never get there.”

Dutton referred to recent rollbacks of state and federal funding, resulting in up to fifteen percent reductions in government support for Samaritan House programs. “All indications have shown that the local community is in support of this development. Now it’s time for us all to join together to make sure this project succeeds.”

Samaritan House received an award of tax credits from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA), which provided approximately $8 million toward the total $11 million project costs. In recent weeks, the organization received an award of more than $800,000 from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. However, these awards do not offer any money for supporting the programs once they are complete.

“It’s important for the community to understand the difference between one-time capital gifts and ongoing operational needs,” says Dutton. “The gifts we have received were necessary to allow the Villages to be built. But with a tripling of service capacity, combined with government cutbacks, we’ll need private support behind us more than ever.”

Dutton pointed out that there are many initiatives underway to help build sustainability into the program, including rent subsidy strategies and other revenue-generating efforts, all of which would help ensure that the housing remains affordable for homeless and low-income residents.

Recent research has indicated that supportive housing such as that provided by Samaritan House helps reduce new HIV infections, while other studies suggest that service-enriched supportive housing is more cost effective than other interventions such as shelters and incarceration.