GraceWay made a big leap recently when it secured the final bit of funding it needed to build its homeless shelter for families, a project that CEO Chrystal Netherton said is over 16 years in the making.
"They did a needs assessment back 16 years ago and found that in the community, there was a huge lack of food security for our citizens, and then also clothing for children, there was a huge need for that. Then most of all was homeless families experiencing homelessness.," she said.
On an Aug. 5 County Commission meeting, St. Lucie commissioners voted to award GraceWay Village with 2.9 million dollars in rescue plan funding that was left over from the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I walked out of that County Commission chamber and I said I feel like I just got off a rollercoaster," she said.
Chrystal said the shelter is going to play an essential role in the community.
"There's the McKinney-Vento program within our St. Lucie County schools and there's over 2,700 kids registered through that program as homeless, so it is a dire need. In our cafe line, we're serving over 11,000 meals a month and we are seeing families. It's a different face of poverty these days. There's families really struggling to make ends meet. There's many families living in their cars, living in their storage units, really dire situations. So providing that place for them to come and stay one to 18 months, depending where they are in life, is gonna be a huge opportunity for them to really propel them to self-sufficiency," she said.
The shelter, which is designed to help families get back up on their feet, will provide housing for up to 18 months for each family.
"This is gonna be 10 units. It's a 10,150 square foot building. It will have a computer lab.
It will have their own living space. Comfortable, but not too comfortable. When they're coming in, their journey is to exit, developing the skills needed to be self-sufficient during that time and then be able to graduate the program successfully, having secured some savings during their stay with us," she said.
It wasn't just the county that GraceWay Village owes a thank you too, Chrystal said.
"Our state representative, Dana Trabulsy, has really gotten behind Graceway Village and propelled us also to be able to execute this opportunity with a million dollar appropriations this year. So we're so excited and thankful for that, as well as our county. They had some American Rescue dollars from the pandemic back in the day, so they were able to write an RFP that Graceway Village submitted a proposal to and that was for $2.9 million," she said.
Now, GraceWay Village is ready to buckle down and get to work.
"So now we go into developing those contracts with the state of Florida and with the county and getting those signed and then going into the design phase. Right now, we're only approved through conception, so we really need to finalize all of our drawings and our designs for the building, which should take about six months, and then we'll be able to break ground. We're really hoping to break ground in 2026," she said.