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Ground broken on new 50-unit affordable housing in Midtown Kansas City

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Posted at 12:25 PM, Sep 12, 2019
and last updated 2019-09-12 19:23:08-04

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At 10 a.m. Thursday, city leaders will join Save, Inc. and the Vecino Group on their groundbreaking project on new affordable housing.

The new apartment community is called Alhaven.

Alhaven, which will be located in Midtown, at 911 E. 31st St. will have 50 units of affordable housing.

Twenty-five-percent of those units will be for young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who have an HIV diagnosis.

"The HIV diagnosis in this part of the country is still growing as opposed to having leveled off or has reduced," Save, Inc. CEO Blaine Proctor said. "Once you get them diagnosed, hopefully you're getting them into treatment and they're staying in treatment."

"These are people's children you see that are homeless," SAVE, Inc. Program Manager Jessica Ross said. "They have mental health issues or substance abuse or physical health issues but these are human beings. And everybody is deserving of stability. Everybody deserves a roof over their head and somebody to care about them."

Proctor said the young adult population is the quickest to fall out of treatment. Because of this, there will be on-site medical services and resources.

"You can't just put someone in housing and say, 'Go ahead, now succeed,'" Proctor said. "There's so many other factors beyond homelessness that affect whether or not they're going to be successful, whether it's a mental health diagnosis, a substance abuse disorder or some other disability."

Ross, who's been a social worker for 18 years, said these wrap-around services are critical.

"Back in the day, there wasn't a lot of supportive services, there wasn't housing. If you wanted to utilize social work resources and HIV care or whatnot, you might have to go to three or four different agencies," Ross said. "So staying in care and that continuity of care really was lacking. So these people are going to have everything on site. If they need to go to a food pantry, they need to go to a doctor, it's all provided."

Funding for this project came from low-income housing tax credits. Construction is expected to be complete in about a year.