An apartment building with 24 one-bedroom units for homeless adults battling alcohol addiction is being built at 1918 N. Sixth St. in the Halyard Park neighborhood north of downtown.
The Thurgood Marshall Apartments project, unveiled by the Milwaukee County Housing Division Wednesday morning, is being paid for with $5.1 million secured through city and county grants totaling $1.15 million, $2.75 million in low-income housing tax credits, and a $1.2 million construction loan from First Business Bank.
The building is expected to open in October.
The housing project is part of a county initiative that began last summer to end chronic homelessness by 2018.
“The theme around all of this is we don’t want to move people to subsistence, we want to move them to independence,” said Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele on Wednesday morning. “It’s recovery-oriented.”
The theory behind the housing project is that the primary need of chronically homeless alcoholics is stable, permanent housing. Once that housing is in place, housing division leaders believe those individuals will be far more likely to begin rebuilding their lives.
“That is the issue that we were dealing with: what if someone is never prepared enough to have their own home?” said Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. “What this model does, is it in essence turns that on its head, and it says, let’s get people into permanent housing right now and let’s deal with them where they are in their lives and help them there. I believe this is going to be a far more successful approach.”
