Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

One of Detroit's most-visible homeless shelters plans to move out of the city's Midtown area to a new, greatly expanded facility on the city's east side within the next two years.

The Neighborhood Service Organization plans to build a $20-million homeless services center, tentatively called the Sanctuary, on Mack just east of Gratiot, with construction scheduled to begin at the start of next year.

NSO President and CEO Sheilah Clay told the Free Press the three-story, 100,000-square-foot facility includes 75 one-bedroom apartments in supportive housing that provides social services for people moving out of homelessness, in addition to shelter space and on-site health care, substance abuse treatment and other amenities.

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Clay said the move represents a decade-long goal of moving the social service agency's homeless services into a larger, more modern facility close to major bus lines so that the NSO can provide centralized help for the city's most chronically homeless — some of whom are turned away from other shelters that require residents not to be drunk or high in order to seek a place to sleep. The NSO takes homeless people others won't — a mission that Clay said is about saving lives no matter what.

The new site would replace the NSO's Tumaini Center, a much smaller facility on 3rd Street near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard that has been the site of frequent littering and open drug dealing on nearby vacant lots that aren't owned or controlled by the NSO. The area is just a couple of blocks west of the new Detroit Red Wings arena that will open later this year.

The goal, Clay said, is a modern facility with space for temporary shelter that includes health and substance abuse treatment, job-readiness training, along with supportive long-term housing for people putting their lives back together. Clay said the facility will include secluded outside garden and park space that offers residents privacy and protection, along with coordinated access to services that can help them get back on their feet.

"All those services will be housed under the same roof," Clay said this week. "One of the wonderful things we're going to have at this site, which we don't have the luxury of where we are now, is controlled outdoor space that is wonderful for the people we serve but also respectful of the community we're moving into. We're providing services to some of the most disenfranchised people in our community ... with dignity and respect."

Clay said the NSO has been working since 2007 with city administrations to find both a location and financial support for the move. She said the agency, over the years, checked out empty schools and other locations throughout the city but finally settled on the site of the former Detroit Police 7th Precinct, which closed in 2006 and was later torn down. She said the site provides the space needed to build, proximity to partners including the nearby Bethel Church of the Apostolic Faith and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, in addition to buses on Gratiot, one of the city's busiest bus lines.

Clay said the move wasn't about the gentrification of Midtown, which is rapidly redeveloping, putting pressure on longtime social service agencies and shelter providers to consider relocating. But she acknowledged that she's in discussions with the Ilitch organization — the pizza, sports and entertainment conglomerate behind the new Little Caesars Arena and related plans for new neighborhoods in the southern end of the old Cass Corridor — about selling the Tumaini Center property.

Closing the Tumaini Center would end a longtime eyesore for the area. Homeless people frequently gather on vacant lots nearby, and Clay said the NSO doesn't own or control those properties and has no authority to keep its clients from congregating there. And there's frequently litter in the area, much of it cups and food containers donated by outside volunteers who bring food for homeless people to eat outside.

The new site will have a commercial kitchen and a dining area inside, along with shelter beds designated, for now, for homeless women because of an acute shortage of shelter space for women citywide, Clay said. The longer-term supportive housing apartments, however, will be available for men and women. Other amenities will include a basketball court, meditation garden, and a vegetable garden for residents to tend.

Clay said she expects construction to begin in January 2018 and shelter space to open later in the year, with apartment leasing to long-term tenants beginning as early as December 2018.

Funding will come from federal homelessness sources, tax credits for affordable housing, philanthropic foundations, as well as whatever financial deal is struck with the Ilitches in the sale of the Tumaini Center, Clay said. She said the Ilitch organization has been a longtime supporter of the NSO.

Alvin Mitchell Jr., a project specialist with the city's Housing Revitalization Department, said the city has been working with the NSO since the administration of former Mayor Dave Bing and remains committed to the move under Mayor Mike Duggan and city planning director Maurice Cox. The city helped NSO find the right site for its new facility and assisted it on zoning issues and architectural design so that the new building reflects the character of historic buildings nearby. It features red and brown brick and beige metals and could easily be mistaken for a loft complex.

"Our intent is for it to be a safe facility and safe environment" for both the surrounding community and the NSO's clients, Mitchell said.

Clay said the NSO has been holding meetings with residents of the area and will include community meeting space inside so that the new facility will integrate with the neighborhood. "We want to be a member of the community," she said, "and we want to have space for them to also be engaged in the work we're doing."

A community meeting for residents will be at 6 p.m. Friday at Bethel Church at 3381 Mack, just east of Gratiot.

The move is getting a mixed review in the neighborhood where the new shelter would be built. The neighborhood has declined over the years, with many vacant homes being demolished, but longtime homeowners have stuck with the area.

Residents band together to look out for each other because the neighborhood has issues with panhandling and burglaries, and lifelong resident Kenneth Jones said he and others worry the problems will increase.

“It’s something that we really don’t need in the community and we’re really trying to get rid of it so we can better the community,” said Jones, 31, a welder whose home is just down the block from where the shelter plans to locate.

But Duane Ashford, 45, another longtime resident who lives down the street from the site, said he attended community meetings about the shelter plans and he’s not concerned that it will hurt the neighborhood. He said NSO representatives reassured residents in the meetings that they work to keep such issues under control.

Ashford said he hopes that with the building of the center comes a commitment to longtime residents for financial help to fix up their homes and otherwise improve the neighborhood.

“I think it's a great idea — I don't like to see people on the streets, for one,” Ashford said. “My only concern is offering something to the existing residents who are going to be impacted by it. If they put up a state-of-the-art homeless shelter and I stay behind it … they ought to be able to fix up our homes to make the neighborhood look good since they want to enhance the history of the neighborhood.”

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.