PEORIA, Ill. – The Peoria City Council will consider authorizing up to $300,000 in emergency funding Tuesday to prevent New Hope Apartments from closing and leaving 80 vulnerable residents homeless during winter.
Joe Dulin, the city’s Community Development Director, told WMBD’s Phil Luciano Show that the downtown facility is facing a crisis after three fires in two months knocked out its fire alarm system.
“Once that happened, the city kind of had to come together, work with New Hope, Phoenix Community Development Services, who manages that property, and the fire department to try to come up with a solution to prevent us from having to post the building, which would essentially have caused about 80 people to become homeless overnight,” Dulin said.
New Hope Apartments provides permanent supportive housing for people transitioning off the streets. The 80-unit facility serves some of Peoria’s most vulnerable residents.
Over the last two months, three separate fires caused by tenants damaged the building. Those residents were evicted and the cases were turned over to law enforcement. However, the fires set off the sprinkler system, causing significant water damage to multiple units.
The most recent fire, which occurred about a week ago, knocked out the building’s fire alarm system.
“A building that size with apartment complexes essentially needs two main things to run safely, a fire alarm system and a sprinkler system, and they only have one of those,” Dulin explained.
Phoenix Community Development Services, which operates the building, is already running at a deficit. The facility has 80 subsidized units, but some grants only provide about $300 per unit in rental subsidies.
“The margins for them to operate are incredibly low with the amount of staff and security that property takes,” Dulin said.
Insurance claims from the fires came with a $100,000 deductible, further depleting the organization’s capital resources.
The proposed $300,000 expenditure would give city management authority to address the immediate crisis. Options include paying for a fire watch team and possibly installing a new fire alarm system.
A fire watch team has been in place for about a week. The team conducts visual inspections every 20 minutes to check for smoke or problems, essentially using humans to replace what the fire alarm system would do.
“That’s been in place for about a week, and luckily we haven’t seen any issues,” Dulin said.
Installing a new fire alarm system could take six to eight weeks. However, Dulin said the city is still weighing whether that’s the best use of funds.
Even with emergency funding, the building’s long-term future remains unclear due to changes in federal funding.
The federal government is shifting from permanent supportive housing to transitional housing, which will reduce funding flowing into the community.
“It’s likely this property might not survive into February and March, even if this didn’t happen,” Dulin said. “But this funding and some solutions that we could put in place will at least keep it operational until then, which prevents a bunch of people being out in the streets during the winter.”
If the building does close, the city will work to find replacement housing for residents and ensure local shelters have capacity to handle an influx of people.
Dulin noted that shelters are already operating at a high capacity this time of year. While each could take 10 to 15 people, none could handle all 80 residents at once.
“That’s why we’ve worked so hard to try to find these solutions and why the city feels this is an appropriate action to take, even if it is the band-aid approach for the next three months,” he said.
The Peoria City Council meets Tuesday to consider the emergency funding authorization.
Listen to the Phil Luciano Show’s interview with Joe Dulin here:
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