Lighthouse Multi-Service Center
VIRGINIA BEACH – Virginia Beach wants to expand services for the homeless by creating a new center where they can get help.
The Lighthouse Multi-Service Center is at 18th Street and Washington Avenue, but the city wants to have a hotel on that property.
So far, however, finding a new home for the program has been a challenge because there's been opposition from residents at various proposed sites.
City officials say the new center is part of their 10-year plan to end homelessness by helping people who’ve fallen on hard times.
Since 1997, the current center has provided day support to single homeless adults like Georgia Saunders.
"First of all, it provides me with an address and that's essential," she said.
She credits the center with helping her reach her artistic potential.
"You see these books and you see the art. If this hadn't been here, you would have seen a person in the bushes, beat up, in the police station, maybe even in prison," she stated. The new center would expand to help families, anyone in a housing crisis and those with a low-income who need certain services.
“What the City of Virginia Beach is proposing would have an amazing effect on the men and women I see come in the doors of our current facility each day,” program director Debbie Maloney said. “I have to turn away calls every single day from individuals and families that we just don’t have the additional resources to provide for, which is why this new facility is so much needed.”
Homeless families, according to a study by the City of Virginia Beach, is the fastest growing population of homeless people.
The center would not be an emergency shelter and wouldn't provide overnight housing or have a dining hall.
Sharon Prescott, Housing Development Administrator for the Va. Beach Dept. of Housing and Neighborhood Preservation, says much of the project is funded, but it's not completely paid.
She says the city budgeted $4.2 million this fiscal year, coming from the city’s general fund and some HUD funds. Prescott says $900,000 in donations is still need to make the new 12,000-square foot center a reality.
