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OGDEN — Three hundred and sixty-three days since breaking ground, a new transitional housing building has opened to welcome families and individuals who have experienced domestic violence and need a safe place to begin rebuilding.
"It is the only project like it in Weber and Morgan counties," Margaret Rose told KSL.com. She is the executive director of the YCC Family Crisis Center and a driving force behind the new facility.
"It's really the only option, and hopefully the best option for survivors in terms of getting into support beyond a crisis shelter," Rose said.
Around 70 people gathered in the parking lot Friday for a groundbreaking ceremony and tour of the new building. It's designed to support up to 40 families with a community room, children's play area, and communal laundry rooms. Inspirational art by local women adorn the hallways leading into glittering new apartments, many of which can be expanded for families needing extra bedrooms.
"With COVID, there was such an increase in domestic violence and also in homelessness," Rose told the crowd that filled the shaded tents and lined the retaining walls of the parking lot. "We know the connection between those two are incredibly strong."
Palepa Anderson, the crisis center's housing case manager, said the end goal for every family is self-sufficiency, and the candidates are chosen case by case.
"It's absolutely not about who we want; it's what we can offer the clients," she said. "So as long as they are willing to be successful and get back out into the community and solidify self-sufficiency for themselves and their families, that's what this program is about."
Those selected to live in the building have opportunities for case management, therapy and classes; and the rent is individualized, on a sliding scale, depending on income.
At most, Anderson says residents will pay 30% of their net earnings, which will allow them to save and reestablish employment. That is where this program differs from low-income housing credits through Section 42 or similar federal programs.
A large part of domestic abuse involves a person's finances and ability to secure housing, development director Keicha Christiansen said. The YCC Family Crisis Center currently runs an emergency shelter, where those escaping violence stay for an average of 60-90 days, but "when they're done in the emergency shelter, they have to find housing, which is one of the biggest barriers to people leaving abusive relationships," Christiansen said.
"Oftentimes, we see people go back to their abuser because they don't have a place to live," she added.
Ogden Police Chief Eric Young attended the event as his last official act before retiring after 32 years. He said domestic violence calls are often the most dangerous for police officers, and the last Ogden officer who died in the line of duty, Nathan Lyday in 2020, was responding to a family fight when he was shot and killed.
There is a serious lack of transitional housing in the state, according to Jen Campbell, executive director of the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition. "We'd love to see it in every county and every area, just because it's so impactful for survivors to have supported housing access," she said, "but it just doesn't exist in many places."
Campbell said these types of projects used to be a priority for federal funds, but "those dollars have really gone down." The YCC had to get two different appropriations approved for funding at the state level while bringing in government, corporate and individual sponsors to get the building done.
The ultimate goal would be a "campus of services," Campbell said. "So you have emergency shelter, you have case management, and you have transitional housing — so that a person sees this as a wraparound opportunity for them to really be supported on that pathway to be safely housed."
Five individuals and families have been chosen from the organization's emergency shelter to be the first to move in.
Here, I think, is where our residents can work to create the self that they want," Rose said. "This is where our children will have a safe space to come home to after school, and it's here where they can get connected to the larger community in a really supportive, loving and healthy way."
