For 10 years, Agape Resource & Assistance Center, Inc. has successfully empowered homeless, women-led families to move from crisis, poverty, and abuse to fulfilling, self-sustaining lives by providing safe, stable, transitional housing and critical wraparound services. To ensure graduates stay housed and to provide housing they can afford, Agape is expanding its continuum of care with Jericho Village™, an innovative urban village of scaled-income rental homes that will be built in Wylie. Jericho Village™ will provide stable homes not only for women-led families who graduate from Agape but for other households who struggle each month to keep their families safely housed and viable. With $4.6 million in equity raised to date, Agape will break ground on the $9.6 million rental housing project within the next six months.
Agape is excited and honored to announce we have completed the requirement to receive funding of an $860,000 grant from The Mabee Foundation. The Mabee Foundation grant is a significant piece of the $4.6 million equity raised to date and is critical to Agape achieving our 60% equity goal for Jericho Village™.
Located on 2.46 acres, Jericho Village™ will feature a 38-unit urban village of income-based rental homes, a community center, a playground, and on-site access to wraparound empowerment services to help vulnerable households attain and retain increased stability. 95% of the units will serve households earning 80% or less of Area Median Income (AMI) with 60% targeting households earning 50% or less of AMI.
Building on the success of Agape’s Empowerment Services Program, Jericho Village™ will uniquely combine economically attainable rental housing with access to support services for all Villagers to help vulnerable households attain and retain increased stability. The goal is to provide safe, stable housing and the ways and means for households to increase stability today leading to stability for generations to come.
Agape owns the land for Jericho Village™, zoning is approved, and architectural and engineering plans have been completed and approved by the City of Wylie; the development is permit-ready. The renderings of the project reflect the feel of community and stability envisioned for almost four years.
Jericho Village™ is being developed under a unique, self-sustaining model where cash flow from rents will cover the cost of operations and debt service. Funding to develop the project will be approximately 60% from equity and 40% from mortgage debt.
Jericho Village™ is an innovative, replicable, self-sustaining housing model demonstrating how municipalities that intentionally include a component of income-based rental units in their city plan will more efficiently and effectively serve their residents and provide a just solution to housing in which individuals and families are proud to live and can afford. It’s our vision that Jericho Village™ will provide a proof of concept for other communities in the future.
We are blessed!
