Presbyterian News Service
06265 May 12, 2006
Home Sweet Home
Grandparents raising grandchildren find safe haven in unique Presbyterian -- supported housing
by Toya Richards Hill
BRONX, NY -- When drugs consumed her daughter, and her three grandchildren needed someone to care for them, Janice Flood stepped in the gap.
She did what grandmothers -- and grandfathers alike -- are doing all over the United States in becoming parents all over again in order to raise their grandchildren.
Yet times have changed since Flood, now in her 60s, raised her own kids in this New York City borough. And her apartment building, once home to Gen. Colin Powell, was no longer a safe place to raise a child, she said.
"Drugs being sold in the hallways," robberies and even murders plagued the building Flood called home for 32 years. "The kids were afraid to come out," she said.
Enter PSS GrandParent Family Apartments -- a one-of-a-kind housing facility opened in June 2005 designed specifically for people just like Flood.
A collaborative effort between Presbyterian Senior Services (PSS) and the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing Inc. (WSFSSH), the $12.9 million development was a newly constructed building created specifically for low-income older adults raising minor children.
Inside the seven-floor facility located at the corner of 163rd Street and Prospect Avenue is a full range of residential and social services, including 24-hour front door security; on-site counseling, support groups and family case management, and a plethora of programs for the youth such as after-school study programs and supervised activities.
Flood, whose grandchildren range from a preschooler to a teenager, learned of the grandparent apartments through a friend also raising her grandchildren there. And once she explored it further, it was just what Flood and her family needed.
"Living here has been a pleasure," she said, relaxing inside a spacious sitting room. "I think I'm here for the duration."
Meeting Flood's needs and those of the other 49 families who live there are exactly what PSS executive director David S. Taylor said was the goal when the project was envisioned.
PSS, a social service agency with six senior centers, already operated a successful South Bronx-based kinship program providing support for grandparents raising grandchildren, which it started in 1995 with a $25,000 grant from the Presbyterian Women (PW). Another PW grant for $35,000 two years later allowed PSS to add much-needed youth activities onto the program.
Yet the kinship program was outgrowing the Davidson Senior Center where its activities were held, Taylor said.
As luck would have it, just behind the senior center was an empty lot that "was a jewel that had gone unknown by the (New York City) housing authority," he said. The thinking was that there, "we could put apartments on top of the resource center."
Discussions about the land began with the New York City Housing Authority in 1998, but wrangling and bureaucracy delayed things for seven years. Finally in 2005 the deal was done, resulting in the 66,470-square-foot residence that includes 40 two-bedroom apartments and 10 three-bedroom apartments. The lower level of the structure houses a large resource center.
The housing authority gave PSS and WSFSSH control of the property with a 99-year lease for $1 a year. The New York State Division of Housing and
Community Renewal provided $6 million in low-income tax credits, and a host of other entities also have provided funding.
Taylor said PSS's collaboration with WSFSSH was key to the success of the project. The not-for-profit WSFSSH has built more than 1,200 units of supportive affordable housing in New York City since it was founded in 1976.
"We had a number of grandparents who were living in really awful situations," said Lisa Hill, director of special projects for WSFSSH. She interviewed the grandparents as part of the approval process.
"We would come out of their buildings and cry," she said. "We had one grandmother who was sharing one bedroom in someone else's house."
The 2000 U.S. Census logged more than 16,000 grandparents raising grandchildren just in the Bronx alone.
Integral, too, in the project's development was the widespread Presbyterian support that flowed in, said Taylor. Denomination partners including PW and Madison Avenue, Fifth Avenue, House of Hope and Rutgers Presbyterian churches have helped provide $1 million for the project, he said.
"The Presbyterian Church has played a major role in this," Taylor said.
Ultimately, PSS and WSFSSH hope the grandparent family apartments will set
an example nationwide.
"This project is the first one of its kind in the country," Taylor said. "It's our hope that this will be a model to say, this is how to do it," Hill added.
Yet for now, the focus is on the families currently involved in order to help them thrive. "Right now we're concentrating on doing this right," Hill said.
"The challenge now is to help these families and be supportive of these families so they can raise these kids," Taylor said.
For more information on the PSS GrandParent Family Apartments, call Taylor
at (212) 874-6633, or email him at dtaylor@pssusa.org.