NYC Health + Hospitals and the Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) recently announced Just Home, a forthcoming housing project for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with life-threatening medical conditions. Located at 1900 Seminole Avenue in the Morris Park section of The Bronx, the initiative will create approximately 70 studio and two-bedroom apartments.
The existing property at 1900 Seminole Avenue currently sits vacant on the NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi Medical Center campus. Tenants will have access to intensive on-site social services provided by licensed clinical social workers, peer workers, and specialists, as well as health services at Jacobi Hospital. The Fortune Society, a non-profit organization focused on individuals impacted by the criminal justice system, will act as the developer, manager, and social service provider for the project.
“New York City has a dire need for supportive housing for our most vulnerable citizens, and few are more vulnerable than those exiting the justice system with serious health conditions,” said HPD commissioner Adolfo Carrión Jr. “Fortune Society has a long, proven record of helping justice-involved New Yorkers reintegrate with their communities, while NYC Health + Hospitals has the expertise to ensure residents receive the level of care and attention we all deserve.”
Just Home will be modeled after The Fortune Society’s Castle Gardens, an 11-story mixed-use property at 625 West 140th Street in West Harlem. Opened in 2011, the 114 apartments at Castle Gardens were also envisioned as transitional supportive housing for formerly incarcerated adults. Today, the property provides features 63 supportive apartments for formerly incarcerated and formerly homeless individuals, 50 units of affordable housing for members of the community, and one apartment for a live-in superintendent.
The Just Home project will ultimately require a ground lease between NYC Health + Hospitals and Fortune. Following a public hearing, the ground lease will need to be approved by the NYC Health + Hospitals board of directors and the New York City Council. Stakeholders are currently contending with fierce backlash from local residents who fear how an influx in formerly incarcerated residents will impact the safety of the Morris Park neighborhood.
“Housing is foundational to a person’s well-being, especially for people in the process of reentry from prison or jail,” said Stanley Richards, deputy CEO, The Fortune Society. “We know from our decades of safely housing people with conviction histories that they can be good neighbors. The neighborhoods that are home to our developments can attest to that.”
The Fortune Society does not expect to open the property until 2025 at the very earliest.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The Castle Gardens property and Just Home are two different ideas. Castle Gardens is for healthy people who have served their time and are on parole, while the other Just Home has to be on a hospital campus with people who have not fully served their time and have not been paroled, but will be in the program because of their health conditions, and the community will not know what crimes those people may have been convicted of. Just Home will also include inmates in jail waiting for trial who may have been seriously injured in their alleged crime.
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