New home for Youth Service Bureau could spur more development in South Bend area
SOUTH BEND — The nonprofit Youth Service Bureau of St. Joseph County broke ground on a new center Thursday, Nov. 3, that — after at least 40 years of operating in three separate houses — will bring its various programs for homeless and traumatized youths under one roof.
The new 22,000 square-foot Center for Youth Success would open the chance for YSB to grow. Teenagers and young adults — often survivors of abuse, neglect and violence — turn to the agency’s staff of nearly 50 for a 24-hour emergency shelter, a street outreach program and a residential program for teen-aged moms, among other services.
But the center will take up only three out of 15 acres in an empty grassy lot that’s been donated to YSB just west of the Town & Country Shopping Center. It offers room for even more new construction that, city and YSB officials say, could benefit the youths with services such as child care, counseling or medical offices from outside partners and businesses, none of which have yet been secured.
South Bend Heritage Foundation has plans for 54 affordable housing apartments that hinge on a funding decision this month.
The site is northwest of McKinley Avenue and Hickory Road — a block west of the intersection along the west side of a drive leading behind a former Target store and other businesses. The back side of the center would border a neighborhood.
YSB started the campaign for the new center with the first gift in December 2020 and now has raised more than $6.5 million of its goal of $7.5 million, Christina McGovern, the YSB’s director of development and marketing, said.
She and board Vice President Frank Perri, a local real estate developer, feel confident that they’ll raise the nearly $1 million that’s left in the campaign. Among the community support, the county and the city of South Bend each pitched in $750,000, and the city of Mishawaka pledged $375,000 — all of that from federal pandemic American Rescue Plan dollars.
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Contractors will prepare the ground this fall, then begin construction in the spring. Perri, who heads the YSB’s building committee, said that, if all goes well, they hope to finish the building and move in by early 2024.
Improved spaces
Executive Director Jennifer Pickering said the new center will cut back on inefficiencies that have come with operating out of three separate houses. No more duplicative phone and internet services. Or off-site board meetings or rented library rooms for all-staff meetings because of a lack of space.
Staff will be able to walk clients from one program to another. That will save time wasted, Pickering said, when young mothers in the emergency shelter have to arrange a separate meeting and move into YSB’s longer residential program.
“The best chance to stay engaged (with clients) is right way,” Pickering said.
Likewise, if a safety issue arises in the Safe Station emergency shelter — which is now nearly four miles from her office — she or other staff will be able to “walk down the hall.”
Up until now, she said, YSB has focused it dollars on programs rather than its buildings, which officials say are old and cramped. Perri said that, when he joined the board six years ago, he made a “glaring” observation: YSB was well managed, but its facilities didn’t “reflect the work that they do.”
The administrative offices are at 2222 Lincoln Way W. near Elmer Street, and the Safe Station shelter is at 1322 Lincoln Way E. between Miami Street and Twyckenham Drive, which is next to a home that serves as its drop-in day center.
That’s in addition to 10 apartments that YSB leases in the Prosper Apartments complex, formerly Park Jefferson, providing homes for its Porch Light program for young pregnant and parenting moms and for its Transitional Living Program for homeless young people, ages 18 to 21, who often are aging out of foster care.
YSB will keep some of the Prosper apartment leases, McGovern said, while some of the young residents will instead move into quarters in the new building.
McGovern said the new site, chosen because it was donated, is good because it’s on a bus line and is closer to Mishawaka, where it could potentially reach more kids. Young mothers could walk to a grocery store, shops or jobs. Nearby Bethel University could be a source of more student volunteers.
The new emergency shelter will house up to 16 youths, up from eight now. McGovern said it will avoid the occasional cases where two kids have needed shelter when there was just one bed available.
“It’s never going to be enough,” she said of the added beds. But she said it balances what the agency can manage with its staffing for a 24-hour shelter.
McGovern said staff have been involved in the new center’s design to avoid a sterile atmosphere.
“We want it to be warm and inviting,” she said. “It’s a voluntary program. They (youths) have to want to stay.”
Staff also helped, she said, to ensure that it has good sight lines so they can keep an eye on traumatized kids who may be at risk of harming themselves or tangling with other residents.
Kitchen, showers and laundry
The new center will have a half-court gym that could be used for various activities and meetings. The Young Moms’ Self-Sufficiency Program sometimes has classes, but they must be done with just a few moms at a time or at another location. In the gym, they could gather about 30 for classes, which opens the chance for outside organizations to help.
“Right now, we don’t have any place for that at all,” McGovern said.
The apartment setting can be intimidating for some teen-aged moms with kids, she said. In the new center, young mothers and young adults will live in dorm-like rooms where they have a kitchenette, plus access to a lounge.
They’ll also fix meals in a commercial kitchen that, for the first time, will allow YSB to hold cooking classes. That could also open the chance for learning job skills if YSB launches a microenterprise where kids make, package and sell food products, McGovern said.
The new drop-in center will have lockers and shower and laundry facilities. Students sometimes can’t bathe or run out of clean clothes in an acquaintance’s home where they’re spending the night, at times because the utilities are off. That makes them more likely to skip school and drop out, McGovern said.
“Youth homelessness is so, so different than adult homelessness,” she said. “If you don’t intervene, the consequences are really dire.”
Homes, street and park
South Bend Heritage hopes to build 54 units of affordable housing for rent north of the YSB center — a mix of duplexes, townhomes and a six-unit complex — on 3.2 acres it would buy from YSB.
Executive Director Marco Mariani said that hinges on whether South Bend Heritage wins highly competitive low-income tax credits through the Indiana Community and Housing Development Authority. It expects to hear word on that Nov. 17.
To be called SB Thrive, Mariani said preference for the apartments would go to young mothers who are emerging from YSB’s programs.
To help facilitate future development like this, the city of South Bend plans to turn the private retail drive into a named city street and extend it north so that it connects with the residential North Patterson Drive in the next two years. Caleb Bauer, South Bend's executive director of community investment, said neighbors, in recent meetings with the city about the project, have expressed general concerns about traffic by their homes. He said the city will take traffic calming measures but doesn’t expect a lot of cut-through traffic.
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Because the street would go through Sorin Park, a small pocket park with a swing set and slide, Bauer said, the city hopes to shift the park to the west side of the new street — using land donated by YSB — and completely redesign it with new features.
Bauer feels these overhauls could also help to reinvigorate retail businesses in that corner of McKinley and Hickory.
“We’re optimistic about the site,” he said, “and excited about Youth Service Bureau’s outreach services for the community.”
Tribune staff writer Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Youth Service Bureau of St. Joseph County to build new center
