NJCDC Celebrates Birch Arms One-Year Anniversary With Dedication Ceremony and Tree Planting

On Friday, May 22, New Jersey Community Development Corporation (NJCDC) hosted community representatives, partners and supporters at its one-year anniversary celebration of Birch Arms supportive housing program. The residents of Birch Arms, all of whom are formerly homeless with a mental illness, provided tours of their apartments. One resident named William shared his personal story with the guests about how Birch Arms and the Housing First program changed his life and the lives of his new family – the other residents at Birch Arms. Speakers at the event also included New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency’s (HMFA) Executive Director Marge Della Vecchia, Enterprise Community Partners Vice-President Tom Eastman and NJCDC President Bob Guarasci.

“When developing real estate projects, it’s pretty common to host a groundbreaking or ribbon-cutting ceremony,” noted Mr. Guarasci. “But we’re very excited to come back a year later and invite the partners that helped fund this development to meet the residents who are living better lives because of their support. The tangible benefits of projects like Birch Arms are easy to measure in the heartfelt thanks of our residents. It was wonderful to share their gratitude with the community.”

NJCDC Director of Real Estate Development Randi Moore continued, “These residents certainly have ‘grown roots’ in their new home, as they all have been at Birch Arms from the opening of the building, demonstrating the enormous success of the Housing First model of ending homelessness. We are proud of the choices of the individual Birch Arms residents in greatly improving their lives by tackling addiction problems, finding and keeping steady jobs, and reuniting with family. These individual results are the ones that matter most.”

Birch Arms contains fifteen studio apartments equipped with private kitchens and full bathrooms. The building also includes common laundry facilities, a multi-purpose common room, resident lounges, high speed internet access, outdoor green and garden space, a security desk, and controlled-access entry. It was designed to blend into a quiet cul-de-sac on Birch Street and remain indistinguishable from existing housing in the community.

City Green, an organization that works to facilitate the creation and expansion of urban community gardens and communal green open spaces in Northern New Jersey’s cities, donated a Birch Tree for planting on the grounds in celebration of the one-year anniversary.

Birch Arms was made possible with funding and support from the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits with Enterprise Community Partners Inc. as the equity provider, the New Jersey HMFA Special Needs Housing Trust Fund, HUD McKinney Funds, New Jersey State Rental Assistance Program vouchers, and the City of Paterson.

For more pictures from the celebration, visit our photo gallery.