Ford CEO Jim Farley on new apartments for Detroit homeless: 'Band-Aids aren't enough'

A Detroit non-profit that helps unhoused people took a big step Friday toward executing an audacious long-term plan to eliminate chronic homelessness in Detroit by 2030.

Father Tim McCabe, executive director of Pope Francis Center, led the groundbreaking of a Bridge Housing Campus that will provide 40 studio apartments as temporary shelter to people for 90 to 120 days. The project will include social and job-preparation services as well as comprehensive medical care that covers physical, psychological and addiction needs.

Year after year, city officials have been discouraged to see 2,000 people looking for a warm safe place to sleep on any given night, Mayor Mike Duggan said Friday.

"How is this progress? We had built here, and really across America, a network of 24-hour homeless shelters," he said.

While praising efforts to get people off the street for a night and feeding them, he questioned the wisdom of just returning people to the streets in the morning.

"What if we didn't treat these individuals as emergency charity cases we had to get through the night?" the mayor asked. "What if we treated them as people with talents and abilities and dreams of their own."

Now Detroit is focusing on treating conditions that lead to homelessness, Duggan said.

5.3 acres of vision

People who stay in these studio apartments will eventually transition to permanent supportive housing. Pope Francis Center staff already helps people gather documentation needed to access permanent housing.

The facility — which is bordered by West Hancock Street, Lawton Street and the Jeffries Service Drive — is targeted to open in mid-2023. Residents of the surrounding Core City neighborhood will have access to the health clinic, recreational facilities including an art studio, as well as life skills courses and a computer lab.

Construction on the 5.3-acre campus is expected to begin in early 2022.

'Not about Band-Aids'

Ford CEO Jim Farley, a longtime volunteer and financial supporter of Pope Francis Center who lives downtown, attended the groundbreaking -- hard hat and shovel included.

"We have to deal with the root cause, the whole person," Farley said. "When I was 16, I was very close to my grandfather, who was very proud to be from Detroit. We got up one morning and went to Saint Peter and Paul Jesuit Church to feed the hungry. I remember he said, very simply, 'Jim, it's about loving thy neighbor as thyself.' Back then, it felt like you were giving something. But, actually, I learned very quickly it was the opposite."

He added, "The Band-Aids aren't enough anymore. We have to deal with the root cause, the whole person. That's why we're here. This facility that will stand on this ground is intended for that ... It's not about Band-Aids. It's about the whole self."

23 shelters, 9 cities

This housing project is likely going to be a national model, Duggan said.

He credited McCabe, executive director of the Pope Francis Center, which created the vision for the project and worked to raise the millions needed to build it.

McCabe traveled to 22 shelters in nine cities in California, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., to find best practices.

"I wanted to see what other people were doing, what was working and what wasn't," he said Friday. "I came home with the conviction that we could build a program that would help people in making the transition from life on the streets to a better future."

There will also be an outdoor shelter with heated sidewalks and radiated heat around the perimeter to help those who, because of severe trauma, are unable to come indoors, McCabe said.

"We'll keep them from the elements," he said. "We'll keep them from freezing to death on the streets. And we will help them to imagine a life better than the one they're currently living."

McCabe announced in April the strategy to address unhoused residents with an initial $22 million plan. The price tag has increased to $30 million with increased building costs. And McCabe announced a new $6 million donation -- in addition to $7 million previously committed -- from the Northern California-based Julia Burke Foundation.

"It all began with a Google search," Robbie Murphy, a member of the foundation board, said Friday.

She explained that the charitable organization was looking for projects to support, so Murphy searched "Detroit" and "homeless" and up popped Pope Francis Center.

The foundation was created by the parents of Julia Burke, a 16-year-old student in Oakland, after she died in a car accident.

"Julia would be so proud," Murphy said, to know part of her legacy will be this Bridge Housing Project.

The center is providing food and services to an estimated 200 guests daily out of the TCF Center for a second year, since relocating from its former site at 438 St. Antoine during the pandemic.

From March 2020 to March 2021, Pope Francis notes on its website that donations have helped pay for 109,000 meals, 6,000 showers, 2,550 loads of laundry and more than 200 vaccines.

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The City of Detroit sold the land for the Bridge Housing Campus to Pope Francis Center at a reduced rate to help support the organization’s mission. An estimated $24 million has been collected toward the $30 million project.

Donald Rencher, group executive for Planning, Housing and Development for the City of Detroit, said at the event, "We're truly acting in the embodiment of scripture."

Major donors to the project also include Lear Corp. and Piston Group.

Regular Pope Francis Center services will continue from a downtown Detroit location even after the Bridge Housing Campus is open, the non-charitable organization said in its news release.

More information on the Pope Francis Center is available at popefranciscenter.org/, and it is on Facebook and Instagram.

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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard at 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid. Sign up for our autos newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit housing project led by Pope Francis Center, Ford CEO