Center Explores Paths to Building Senior Affordable Housing on Campus
The Pride Center wants to offer seniors an aff ordable place to live in the heart of Wilton Manors. Our Board of Directors continues to explore the best path to build lowincome senior housing on the Equality Park campus.
Many local residents learned of the project when we received a demonstration of public support last Fall from the Wilton Manors city commissioners in our application for aff ordable housing credits from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation. Although we didn’t receive funding from our fi rst submission, our Board already is assessing future opportunities for funding. This project will allow us to expand our vital programs and services to seniors and bring substantial income to The Center.
How did we arrive to this exciting juncture? A few years ago, Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing identifi ed a desperate need in the greater Fort Lauderdale area for low-income housing. We have a growing, aging LGBT local population with limited affordable housing options. The City of Wilton Manors approached The Center about addressing local needs and Equality Park’s optimum location and resources to help meet those needs. We’ve also seen a national trend toward senior affordable housing projects being built in conjunction with LGBT community centers with whom we work–L.A., San Diego, Chicago and Philadelphia, just to name a few.
Four years ago during our Strategic Planning process, the Board of Directors set a goal to evaluate the potential of a senior affordable housing project to be built on Equality Park. Over the next three years, we did our due diligence. Let me tell you, this is one of those projects where the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.
Luckily, we have board members with these specific skills and experience. One of those, Jim Walker, said, “The Center is extremely fortunate to have a five-and-half acre campus, and we want to maximize that resource to serve our community. We also are fortunate to have several community members who were willing to help The Center.”
During this same time, we also decided to update the Master Plan for our campus. We partnered with Jason Hagopian at TSAO Design and his team in the year-long process. Last Spring, we gathered 65 diverse community leaders to participate in a Charrette. During this guided planning retreat, community members brainstormed and prioritized possibilities of how we could and should use our campus in the future. It was the largest Charrette Jason and his team had facilitated. These community members gave up their free time to gather together to help identify the roadmap for Equality Park’s future. It was an amazing experience.
The results of that Charrette were presented to the Board last summer, and the top priorities helped set our direction. One goal, for example, was to make the campus more family-friendly. Last October, we installed the first playground on an LGBT community center campus in the United States.
Board ChairIlene Berliner was impressed by the investment of so many community members in the campus planning process. “The contributions from our immensely talented board, donors and volunteers humbles me. What The Pride Center at Equality Park has in store for the future is beyond any of my wildest dreams, and my belief is that the generous contributions of time, talent and funding will continue to make what was a blank canvas an incredible destination.”
The Senior Aff ordable Housing Project remains one of the largest, most significant projects identified both by our Strategic Plan and the Charrette process. Over the past several years, we cultivated relationships with three top developers in the South Florida area. In the end, we partnered with Carrfour, Florida’s largest non-profit developer, to submit our first proposal this past November.
There was a specific funding opportunity that the federal government had put into place in the 1980s. It became apparent that those tax credits were going to sunset at the end of 2015. Over a six week period, we worked very hard with Carrfour, with some help from TSAO Design, to come up with the finished proposal.
On November 5th Carrfour submitted our proposal. Only four projects were going to get funded out of 56. Each proposal to the state was assigned a lottery number based on luck of the draw. We drew number 55 out of 56 applications, not the best luck. Our first submission didn’t lead to instant success, but The Center continues to evaluate new opportunities for funding.
As a Center, we look forward to the day when we announce successful funding of this important project. It will enable us to meet the growing needs of many in our community. Very selfi shly, I’m looking ahead for myself. I want to be able to pack my office in a grocery cart and move into my own apartment when the time comes.
