The Ruth Ellis Center and the Detroit Housing & Revitalization Department celebrated a groundbreaking on a brand-new $15 million permanent supportive housing development on Friday. Located along Detroit's Woodward Corridor and targeted toward LGBTQ youth, the new 43-unit apartment project known as The REC Center at Clairmount will allow LGBTQ people experiencing homelessness and in need of shelter to have housing support that's not time-limited.
Photos by Andrew Potter:
“There will be two full-time case managers in the building, there will be a full-time mental health therapist and there will be a full-time peer support who will actually live in the building,” said REC Executive Director Jerry Peterson. “So there will be a team of four people who will be present all the time and available to the residents, working intensively with them in terms of social supports, job supports and then, of course, in the building we're working toward youth entrepreneurial projects where people can live and potentially work in the building.”
Though still called “youth” entrepreneurial projects, Peterson said that there will be no upper age limits on anything that the Clairmount location provides. However, despite the lack of time limit for a person's stay, the units are intentionally constructed to be small, to both maximize the number of people who can be helped at any given moment and to encourage residents to “aspire to” different housing when moving on.
Learn more about REC's upcoming projects online at ruthelliscenter.org.
