Delayed Youth Shelter Wins $500K Boost

What might one day be built at 924 Grand.

A long-in-the-works plan to open a youth homeless shelter in Wooster Square got another jolt of public funding, as the Board of Alders approved spending $500,000 in federal Covid aid to help finance its construction.

Local legislators took that vote Monday night during the most recent full Board of Alders meeting, which was held in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

That money — which comes from federal Covid-19 relief funds in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) — will help Youth Continuum provide 12 shelter beds for young people aged 18 to 24. The nonprofit will be moving that same number of beds from an existing site in West Hills to a to-be-redeveloped location at 924 Grand Ave., where Youth Continuum will also operate a warming center and offer walk-in support for young adults under that one Grand Avenue roof.

Monday’s final approval of how to spend this $500,000 in ARPA aid comes less than a month after the same proposal was unanimously passed out of the Board of Alders Community Development Committee in late November.

Having the city money is exciting because it keeps the project moving forward,” Youth Continuum Executive Director Tim Maguire wrote in a text to the Independent. They were long committed funds and really important to the overall build.”

With these funds, Youth Continuum has over $6.5 million earmarked for this project, including other state and federal funds as well as $1.2 million from private donors. 

Cost estimates for the project have grown considerably since its inception, from an estimated $4.5 million in 2019 to nearly $7.5 million today, which the nonprofit’s leadership largely attributes to supply-chain issues. 

The group is now seeking a $875,000 state Community Investment Fund grant to cover the rest of their construction costs. According to Maguire, the nonprofit submitted its grant proposal to the state last week and will hear back in the first quarter of 2025.

The shelter was officially proposed in 2018 as a joint enterprise between Cambridge-based Y2Y and Youth Continuum. The City Plan Commission approved the project in 2019.

In a November interview with the Independent, Maguire blamed the construction delays on pandemic-induced challenges, including problems acquiring steel and a Connecticut Department of Housing mandated redesign.

At Monday night’s hearing, Hill Alder Carmen Rodriguez, who chairs the alders’ Community Development Committee, praised the plan for its integration of youth shelter beds with the drop-in resources Youth Continuum already has at 924 Grand. Those include food, laundry, a shower, computers, case management, human trafficking-specific support, and a youth-specific warming center.

With [the lack of] affordable housing and everything else, it’s difficult, so that’s one of our missions for the Board of Alders — to get some affordability,” Rodriguez told the Independent after the meeting. This is costly, but not more costly than having 18- to 24-year-olds on the streets.”

The board approved the funding without any further debate.

Alder Carmen Rodriguez: “This is costly, but not more costly than having 18- to 24-year-olds on the streets.”

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