A long-term housing project for the homeless on the Near East Side that has faced pushback from some nearby residents secured approval this week from the Madison City Council.
The proposed eight-story, 70-unit building would be located at 521 E. Washington Ave., within a block of The Beacon homeless day services shelter and the Salvation Army of Dane County’s shelter for homeless women.
Several people who live or own businesses near the site argued before the city Plan Commission on July 8 and the City Council on July 16 that the area already deals with frequent police calls and is the wrong place for low-income housing.
“It’s an open-air drug market,” Richard Freihoefer, the only person registered to speak about the project at Tuesday’s meeting, told the council. “We can’t take it all.”
Others have said the project, which would also include office space for Porchlight Inc., Dane County’s largest provider of housing and services for the homeless, would be a better use for the corner of East Washington Avenue and South Blair Street than the former Monarch Health building that now sits vacant at the site.
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“Organizing resistance to push lower income housing options further out to other parts of the city does not solve any problems,” Jordan Mader, who lives a few blocks from the project site, said in a public comment emailed to the Plan Commission.
The Porchlight project offers “a rare opportunity to build a less segregated city,” Mader said.
After developer LZ Ventures of Madison completes the new Porchlight building, it plans to demolish Porchlight’s existing facility at 306 N. Brooks St., near UW-Madison, and replace it with a 15-story, 189-unit student housing project.
Both parts of the proposal received unanimous council approval.