75 low-income families are now renting apartments in St. Vincent’s Gardens, a new affordable housing complex in Santa Barbara run by the Daughters of Charity. The complex “is already shining as a symbol of subsidized housing done right.”
For years, the Daughters in Santa Barbara took care of the developmentally disabled. When the need for that work declined (due to mainstreaming of the disabled in small group homes) the sisters asked the community what it needed and were told that what people needed was affordable housing.
The Daughters reponded, partnering with Mercy Housing of California and getting the City and County of Santa Barabara on board. There were difficulties, there were delays, and various infrastructure improvements still have to be completed, but residents started moving in this past November. Sister Alicia Martin, the executive director of the project expresses the goal of having “a little village with all the amenities to make our residents self-sufficient, to make them contributing members to society rather than a burden.”
Fears always run high when talk turns to putting low-income housing in a neighborhood. There are always “NIMBY” activists claiming that bringing in such housing will destroy the neighborhood. The success of a compex like St. Vincent’s Gardens can go a long way in quelling those fears.
Read here for a fuller account of this project of the Daughters of Charity.
Tags: Anti-poverty strategies, Homelessness