The affordable housing crisis continues in the Reno area, but projects like the Gen Den housing complex are looking at alternative solutions to get people into affordable housing.
Thursday morning, community members, project partners and elected officials met at the empty lot at 1100 W. 4th Street for the groundbreaking ceremony for the Gen Den affordable housing complex.
It is a project that has been spearheaded by Monica DuPea with the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project and has the support of the city of Reno as well as many different donors and organizations.
“Nonprofit developments are pretty rare. They typically happen right about once every 10 years,” said DuPea, who is also executive director of Truckee Meadows Housing Solutions. “It’s just very difficult to pull together a nonprofit development. Nonprofit agencies aren’t typically housing developers so they count on engineers, architects, people from the community with that skill set to kind of step up and offer that type of help.”
The city donated the land for the Gen Den project in 2019. The housing complex will have 10 units, each of which will be about 400 square feet and have a living/dining area bedroom, bathroom and small terrace.
The rent will not exceed $500 a month and is meant to house both seniors and young adults who are income-limited. The young residents of the Gen Den will be graduates of the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project and will serve as a stepping stone to more permanent housing.
“I originally was managing the Nevada Youth Empowerment Project, and as our young women were leaving the program they were not able to find affordable housing in Reno, which pushed us to open up our own housing so that we could set that affordability rate,” DuPea added. “As those girls are graduating out of our affordable house, the fair market housing is still too pricey for them in the community so we’re having to build that next-level housing.”
The Nevada Youth Empowerment Project will be in charge of managing the complex and helping younger residents learn how to become more self-sufficient to eventually move on to other, more permanent housing.
The idea behind having younger people and seniors living together is to have each group help and influence the other. The young residents will spend five hours each week spending time with the seniors as “good neighbors.”
Time spent will include activities like watching sports together, celebrating birthdays and keeping seniors from isolation.
Truckee Meadows Housing Solutions is planning a second affordable housing project that will be similar to the Gen Den.
