Pope Francis Center to open housing and community campus to serve unhoused, neighborhood

The Pope Francis Center is on a mission to help end chronic homelessness in Detroit — and it will soon find out if its solution will work.

The nonprofit has been operating for 33 years as a small operation at the Saints Peter and Paul Jesuit Church located at 438 St Antoine in Detroit, near the Renaissance Center. In 2016, the day center established itself as a nonprofit that features a commercial kitchen, laundry room, meals, clinics and showers.

But the nonprofit felt it was necessary to keep expanding.

Father Tim McCabe S.J, president and CEO of the Pope Francis Center, traveled the country to find a solution to homelessness. He looked at the effectiveness of 25 programs in 10 different cities.

“Across the country, the way people are successful with working with this population is trust,” McCabe said. “That's when I realized we had done that already with the center, so we're positioned now to let people know that we care about them, and we want what's best for them.”

The organization, in partnership with J.S. Vig Construction Co., has finished most of the framed structure for a 60,000-square-foot facility on 6 acres at 2915 W. Hancock St. in Detroit. The goal is to finish the construction of the Bridge Housing Campus in April 2024. The plan is to bring unhoused residents in by May.

The Homeless Action Network of Detroit recorded 1,691 people who were experiencing homelessness in Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck on one night in January 2022. And in 2022, there were 4,804 people who utilized shelters in the three cities, according to HAND.

“Most of the folks that we work with at the Pope Francis Center, and those that will be serving at the new campus, primarily will be those who have the most difficult challenges to face,” said Jim Vella, chair of the Pope Francis Center board.

What’s in the new facility

A large construction zone is located in the Core City neighborhood in Detroit as the Pope Francis Center builds its new Bridge Housing Campus. It’s a privately funded project and the nonprofit has raised $37 million in about a four-year period, with $3 million more needed for operational costs.

The facility will feature 40 studio apartments at 800 square feet with a small refrigerator, microwave, and bathroom. There’s a strategic plan for selecting who can occupy these spaces.

“It's the people that are held hardest to house — I want to grab people that nobody else is helping,” McCabe said. There is a focus on housing those who haven’t been able to remain housed or those who experience mental illnesses or addiction.

Residents of the neighborhood will also be able to use the public spaces.

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The facility has a dining room, full kitchen, family room, therapy room, art room, and community room near the classrooms, which is reserved for teaching job readiness and life skills. Other public spaces include a barber shop, two outdoor courtyards, a computer room, and a nondenominational chapel. There are safety measures such as a security office and a hot room to kill bed bugs.

There’s also a gymnasium, which received a $1 million donation from Vinnie Johnson, a former Detroit Pistons basketball player. There’s a 5,000-square-foot medical clinic in partnership with the CHASS Center that features a respite area with 10 beds, a clinic with exam rooms and doctors, and a dental clinic. And there’s a donation center.

Then, there’s an outdoor shelter that features heated sidewalks and sunscreens with security, bathrooms, and showers. Guests can bring their items to camp out in the area.

“What I learned around the country and what I know from some of our guests is that because of the severity of trauma, or mental illness, they can't come indoors or won’t come indoors,” McCabe said. Some parts of the facility resemble a state park or a highway overpass to give guests familiarity.

The site that the facility sits on used to hold a textile factory, which ended up closing. Soon, people who experienced homelessness began to live in the building and they would burn rags to stay warm. But one day in 1987, it set the building on fire and three firefighters died while trying to put out the blaze, leading to one homeless man being charged with murder. A mural will be created in remembrance of the fire.

“So, we reclaim this space for them on their behalf,” McCabe said. “But the building is built noncombustible, so there's no wood framing. Everything is metal frame, cold framing. Everything is built so that there's never potential for that ever to happen on the space again.”

Downtown location will remain

In the current facility, the number of people visiting has increased over the last few years.

“Before the pandemic, we were seeing 100 to 120 people a day, and now it’s tipping toward 200,” said Father Tim McCabe. “There’s a lot of reasons and there’s a lot of new people right now. Some people are climate disaster refugees and they’re coming up from the south. Some of them are … a lot of evictions going on right now since the moratorium on evictions ending. We’ve seen a lot of that.”

“And then, just generally, I think the economy is bad for people at the bottom of the social economic ladder, so people are losing their jobs or going into financial crisis,” McCabe said.

Because there’s still a need for food and hygiene care in downtown Detroit, the St. Antoine Street location will continue its operations, even when the new facility opens.

"I want to keep the church space open because when people are newly homeless, they tend to gravitate toward downtown to find other homeless, to find services,” McCabe said. “So that's the place where we kind of establish our relationships and gain their trust and let them know what we're offering.”

The facility is open from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Monday through Saturday with the help of 13 staff members and at least 10 rotating volunteers.

The facility offers bathrooms, showers, shaving stations and laundry. There are two meals a day; one meal is a continental breakfast at 7 a.m. and the second is a home-cooked meal at 9 a.m. The space often holds medical, dental, and legal clinics for its visitors, along with a monthly mobile Secretary of State office to ensure that people have IDs. And there are also bicycle repair clinics.

“It’s to meet the immediate needs of those who are on the street,” Vella said. “In many cases, it comes down to helping save people's lives. We provide shelter when it gets really cold. We provide a meal that might be the only person's meal of the day. The downtown center is really about getting people through the day, meeting their immediate needs and trying to encourage them to find their path back into a more safe environment.”

Find out more information or sign up to volunteer at popefranciscenter.org.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pope Francis Center in Detroit to open Bridge Housing Campus shelter