Waypoint House

Address

1041 S. Preston Street Description Waypoint House has 24 single-room occupancy units (SRO) for homeless male or female Veterans. These are for Veterans who are homeless, at immediate risk of homelessness, or currently living in a transitional housing setting. They do not need to have a disability to qualify for housing.

Facility

Waypoint House is a two-story building with 24 single-room occupancy units. The SRO model has individual rooms with shared kitchens and bathrooms. Private rooms are 140 square feet and come fully furnished. The updated facility, which was renovated in 2023, includes two self-service kitchens, laundry room facilities, and common areas for connection and recreation. There are private bathrooms for every two units.

Support

Veterans receive resources from the Veteran’s Administration (VA) and access to lunch and dinner seven days a week at our Open Hand Kitchen and groceries from our Food Pantry. However, they will not have case managers, but do receive clinical services.

We opened Waypoint House in November 2011. This was a part of an $11.1 million expansion project to transform our campus. It included the construction of four new buildings—Waypoint House (24-single room occupancy units), East Family Apartments (10 units), West Family Apartments (10 units), and One Bedroom Apartments (10 units) at the corner of Preston and St. Catherine Streets, and the remodeling of the 14,000 square-foot building from our Thrift Store & Warehouse Operations into the Family Success Center (until December 2024).

The lots where these four new buildings were constructed previously had dilapidated shotgun houses on them. The new construction provided a total of 54 new housing units, funded by $9.6 million from Stock Yards Bank, a $1.5 million loan from Brown Forman, and Community Development Block Grants from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Planning for the project began in 2005 because our Board recognized that while there was some off-campus housing and individual work from our conferences, the Shelby Park neighborhood was in need of permanent affordable housing. In 2008, we applied to Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC) for tax credits for these four buildings. KHC is the state agency that awards tax credits. With the Great Recession, everything was delayed until 2010, when it was made possible to construct these apartments through multiple government entities and private funding.

We purchased the land and property to build these apartments because there was, and still is, a significant unmet need for shelter space and affordable housing. Vacant businesses on the lot that became One Bedroom Apartments were torn down to pave the way for the 10 units of affordable housing. This was an opportunity to serve the community in a new way. At the time, we primarily operated emergency and transitional housing with congregate rooms and little privacy, rather than permanent affordable housing. This move was a significant step in serving the homeless and low-income households of our community.

The initial idea behind the tax credit property was for our clients in emergency and transitional housing programs to graduate into these apartments with income of their own. However, over time, after a HUD Continuum of Care (CoC) sitebased PSH grant was paired with the property, we shifted to taking all referrals from the CoC’s coordinated entry and implementing a Housing First model, as HUD and the CoC required. Thus, many clients don’t have income and all of our referrals come through the coordinated entry and could be living at another local shelter or on the streets.