Vincent’s Village has opened its doors to provide affordable and supportive housing options to seniors in the village of Nanuet in Rockland County, New York.
Developed by the Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corp. and Rockabill Development, the new community provides 93 affordable homes with on-site health and wellness services for adults 55 and older.
The project is built on land that served as the longtime home of St. Agatha’s orphanage, which dated back to 1884 and was operated by the Sisters of Charity. Although the former facility no longer stands, its ties to the site continue.
“It’s an appropriate reuse of the site that has been owned of the Sisters of Charity for over a hundred years,” says Niall J. Murray, managing principal at Rockabill Development. “As an orphanage, it had served and sheltered and educated kids for a number of years.”
The development team reports that one resident of Vincent’s Village had lived at the orphanage as a child.
The new community utilized a “design build” approach, meaning the team established a one-stop shop for the design and construction with essentially a single point of contact to increase efficiencies. It’s an established practice in different projects but not prevailing in affordable housing, according to Murray.
Vincent’s Village features three residential buildings with 81 one- and 12 two-bedroom units that are affordable to households earning no more than 60% of the area median income. Thirty-five units have access to rental subsidies and supportive services funded by the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative, a state program that supports developments for vulnerable individuals and families that are homeless or at risk of homelessness, including frail elderly.
The development also has two buildings that house a fitness room, a laundry room, and Vinny’s Café, a communal space sponsored by the Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corp. Residents have access to support services, including health monitoring, care coordination and case management, counseling, and social activities. The buildings are situated around a central green space.
Built to LEED Gold standards, Vincent’s Village is the latest project by the Sisters of Charity Housing Development Corp., which sponsors or manages 751 apartments in Rockland County, Manhattan, and Staten Island, says executive director and CEO Matthew T. Janeczko, who has led the organization since 2019.
The old orphanage, which evolved to serve other uses in its final years, was torn down around the time the site was first being redeveloped into housing. In 2003, the Sisters of Charity opened Seton Village, a 106-unit low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) development for seniors. Eighteen years later, the adjacent Vincent’s Village becomes the likely final stage of the site’s redevelopment.
“The Sisters are incredibly attuned to what’s going on in the world, and they realized that it was difficult to find affordable, quality housing,” says Janeczko. “They took this property that they could have sold and said we are going to use this for affordable housing for seniors.”
Financing for the $42 million development includes $7.5 million in tax-exempt bonds and federal low-income housing tax credits from New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR). The housing credits, which were syndicated by CREA, generated about $14.7 million in equity. HCR also provided about $14.4 million in subsidies.
In addition, the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York with Sterling National Bank provided Affordable Housing Program funds, and JPMorgan Chase provided a construction loan.
