By Adam Swift
Domestic violence nonprofit Stone House presented its plans for a new three-story residential building on Westminster Terrace that will provide six units of emergency and transitional housing to the Egleston Square Neighborhood Association (ESNA) on Monday night.
The new building will be around the corner from the new Stone House residential and agency building at the corner of Westminster and Washington.
“The still new-to-us building has 32 units of permanent, affordable housing, a licensed childcare center, and we also have our agency headquarters,” said Stone House CEO and COO Kathy Fagan said of the Westminster Avenue building.
Fagan noted that Stone House has been in the community and the Jamaica Plain and Roxbury neighborhoods for 50 years this year.
Once again, Fagan said Stone House will be partnering with the Planning Office of Urban Affairs on the six-unit emergency shelter and transitional residence.
The Planning Office of Urban Affairs oversees the residential units at 1 Westminster while Stone House handles the childcare center and the agency office. The childcare center currently has 43 children from infants through preschool who have experienced domestic violence, Fagan said.
The new facility will be at 7-9 Westminster Terrace, a location that will provide a number of benefits for the community, the organization, and victims of domestic violence, Fagan said.
“The purpose of having it right next to our agency would be to allow individual clients to receive the resources from 1 Westminster, to be able to have case management there and to be able to travel safely to receive resources,” said Fagan.
Currently, Stone House rents emergency shelter space in Dorchester, and Fagan said it can be difficult for clients to travel from that location to the agency headquarters.
The property at 7-9 Westminster Terrace was owned by the city of Boston, and the BPDA approved naming Stone House the tenants of designee for the property, Fagan said.
“That is when we made the decision to work with the Planning Office of Urban Affairs to provide this transitional housing and emergency housing,” she said.
The goal of the new emergency housing, as well as all Stone House programs, is to provide resources that will allow residents and clients to integrate into the broader community, Fagan said.
“Having something right in our backyard would allow us control and make sure we have eyes on the space at all times,” said Fagan. “The goal is to have support 24/7 and to have staff members at the site at all times.”
The proposed building is three-stories tall and would be a similar height to other buildings in the neighborhood, according to the project architect Michelle Weidler.
“We very much took inspiration from the neighborhood around and the community and really trying to mimic other residential buildings in the area,” she said.
Construction on the building is expected to get underway in the spring of 2025 if all permits are in place.
Fagan said the goal is to have award money from state and federal sources for the build, and Stone House would be responsible for the operational costs.
“We currently receive funds from the Department of Public Health for our current rented emergency shelter and those contracts extend for the next several years,” said Fagan. “So we would be transferring the funds, we would no longer have the rented space, we would be using those funds for our current space.”