Vallejo opens new housing development for homeless residents
VALLEJO -- After years of planning and construction, Vallejo has just opened a new housing development for people who are homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless. Blue Oak Landing is a development years in the making, and for some of those living in or on the brink of homelessness, it's a chance for a new beginning in a brand new home.
"Come on in," was the warm greeting from Chantill Posada, now welcoming her new neighbors into the building she herself just moved into. "Oh yeah. It's beautiful. It's big. It's huge."
She and her son Rex are now stocking their own apartment after seven years of homelessness.
"Seven years," she said in her new kitchen. "With my son, seven. Thank God. I didn't want to raise him out there."
And when she says "out there," she means in a trailer that was hidden within sight of the building she now calls home.
"That's where we were staying," Posada says. "Right there. And I was so mad that they were tearing down the building. And now look at it. I'm in the building."
"It is a modular project that was actually built on Mare Island," explained Samantha Meyer, Senior Project Developer with Eden Housing. "The units were stacked on site. We pair units with a lot of services. So there are voluntary services for everyone if they want them. They can work with case managers. We also have a resident service coordinator."
It has taken about four years, but Vallejo now has 74 new units of affordable housing, in a city with a homeless population thought to be somewhere between 500 and 700.
"Yeah, we had about 1,000 people on the waitlist within two hours," Meyer said of the rush.
"Yeah, I don't believe this," Posada said after getting one of the units. "Everybody says I got the mansion."
For those landing apartments, it is a bit like winning the lottery. And for a city like Vallejo, it's already time to find more affordable housing.
"We are. We're just like everybody else," Assistant City Manager Gillian Hayes said of Vallejo's push to build affordable housing. "Struggling, fighting for the money. Fighting for the nonprofit partners to help where they can. Everyone is spread thin with staffing."
Hayes says the challenge is the waiting list, with about 1,000 more people in line for the next set of rooms.
"You gotta keep that pipeline stacked and keep moving and keep those funding applications in so that you don't lose that momentum," she said. "If you focus on one and it's done, you're right, it's another 2, 3, 4, 5 years until the next one. So you've got to constantly be working at every single stage."
"I just started crying," recalled Posada, thinking of her first moments in her new home. "We are finally here. We're finally off the street."
Posada says she's still adjusting to the quiet of the new home she calls a blessing, and an opportunity to start a new chapter.
"When you stop doing bad things, all your blessings come. All your blessings come," she said.
