Mayor Conger talks new Men’s Homeless Shelter coming to west Jackson
JACKSON, Tenn. — Homelessness across the country is still on the rise. Close to home, the City of Jackson changes the route they will take to support those in need.
The city council approved an agreement to alter their initial plans of building a new homeless shelter on McCorry Street to a different location in order to expand service opportunities.
In June of 2021, the City of Jackson started the process of looking for HUD grants in order to secure homeless solutions, which would administer federal aid to local housing agencies that manage the housing for low-income residents at rents they can afford.
“The conversation really took place with one of our in-housed individuals back in December of 2020 and so we knew that was a need. Not just providing temporary warming shelters but provide a place to empower individuals,” said Mayor Conger.
The original plan was to build a shelter on McCorry Street but, with further assessment to look at other opportunities, the city council agreed to redirect their ideas and instead vote to purchase the existing Airways Motel. Which is soon to become the new Men’s Homeless Shelter located at 576 Airways Boulevard.
“We were able to purchase the Airways hotel for just over a million dollars and so it saved local tax dollars 1.2 million, and then we can utilize the 1.4 million dollar HUD grant to look at permanent housing for those individuals,” said Mayor Conger.
The goal is to use remaining HUD grant funding to create a more sustainable and promising future less fortunate citizens in the community.
“Hopefully we can pivot that grant to the McCorry site to provide permanent housing opportunities, which will fit nice in the master plan of the area as well. So it expands our service ability from 20 some-odd individuals to 64 rooms at the Airway Motel,” said Mayor Conger.
Mayor Conger tells us this will address the need the residents are facing.
“We have some great shelters for women and children but we don’t have any shelter for men, and so how do we empower men to get out the vicious cycle of homelessness if they want to and then get into being contributing citizens of our community,” said Mayor Conger.
According to Mayor Conger, once individuals go through the 90 day homeless shelter process. They’ll then move to temporary housing and pivot to permanent housing. This is an initiative to provide better opportunities for everyone. The new men’s shelter is expected to open as soon as December 2nd.
SEE ALSO: Airways Motel to become Men’s Homeless Shelter, Mayor Conger says
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