The Renaissance Legacy Lofts and John Parvensky Stout Street Recuperative Care Center is an innovative solution to meeting the housing and health care needs of the most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness.
Located in downtown Denver, the development has two floors of recuperative care, with 75 beds in shared rooms and semi-private quads targeted to people experiencing homelessness who have been hospitalized due to an acute medical condition. Instead of being discharged onto the streets, people have a safe space to recover and recuperate with health and social workers.
The upper floors of the nine-story building offer 98 permanent supportive housing (PSH) units targeted to high utilizers of emergency health care. All the PSH units have project-based Section 8 vouchers.
“We believe and know that housing is health care, and the integration of housing and health care is critical to getting people off the streets and keeping them off the streets,” says Jennifer Cloud, chief real estate officer at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH). “This project exemplifies an innovative way to integrate housing and health care and maximize the use of this site to provide a wealth of services.”
The nonprofit used a unique “small planned community association” structure under state law to separate different ownership components of the building before construction. Financing for the $48.3 million project includes low-income housing tax credits, tax-exempt bonds, and New Markets Tax Credits.
The financing for supportive services is also unique, using a “pay for success” model with upfront payments being provided by social investors, and the repayment of those investors being provided by the U.S. Treasury Department and the city and county of Denver based on documented outcomes of housing stability, jail reduction, and reduction of emergency room and hospital costs being covered by Medicaid.
The project used a panelized, light-gauge steel construction, which helped reduce construction time. The community is built to Enterprise Green Community standards and includes solar panels on the roof.
