The $3.5 million Perry Street Supportive Permanent Housing Project will provide new studio apartments to 15 people in an effort to foster self-sufficiency and break the cycle of homelessness. The three-story complex will be located at Perry and Carroll streets, near the Rescue Mission’s headquarters, where a building stood vacant for years.
The subsidized studios will be available to individuals only, and there will be no limit on how long they can live there. Applicants will pay a portion of rent based on income, and Rescue Mission officials said the organization hopes to connect the complex’s occupants with vocational and job training assistance.
Funding for the project was cobbled together from the state and federal government, city affordable housing contributions, and grants, loans and donations from Rescue Mission sponsors and supporters.
Financing included $2.7 million in trust fund money from the New Jersey Housing and Finance Mortgage Agency, $400,000 from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, $300,000 in Regional Contribution Agreement money from the city of Trenton and support from Hutchinson Industries — the Rescue Mission’s biggest corporate sponsor — to buy the vacant building on Perry Street where the apartment complex will be built. Executive director Mary Gay Abbott-Young said it’s her fervent hope that the apartments will be built and ready for occupants in one year. The Mission owns two more permanent housing units on Carroll Street that five people currently call home.
The new apartments will be a major upgrade to the decrepit building that stood on that corner, Abbott-Young said.
“In addition to providing 15 beautiful units of housing for homeless clients, people entering the city on the Perry Street Route 1 ramp and Clinton Avenue, instead of seeing an abandoned building, will see a beautiful new housing complex,” she said.
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