Grove Street Shelter

New Markets Tax Credit Financing Brings Critical Emergency Shelter Services to Middletown

New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing has enabled Hope House Rescue Mission, Inc., a local non-profit organization, to construct and operate the Grove Street Shelter, a new, 14,000 square foot, 50-bed emergency shelter that will serve men, women, and children facing homelessness in Middletown, Ohio. Hope House has served community members experiencing homelessness in the Middletown area for over thirty years, and this new facility will allow its dedicated staff to address the growing need for emergency housing with enhanced wraparound services.

Finance Fund provided $4,000,000 of federal NMTC allocation and $2,564,103 of state NMTC allocation to finance the project, and Capital One was the tax credit investor. The Grove Street Shelter is located in a severely distressed, low-income neighborhood of Middletown, which has a poverty rate of 37.1%, a median family income equal to 38.86% of the applicable area median family income, and an unemployment rate of 20.5% (2.47 times the national rate). The neighborhood is also designated as a USDA Food Desert, HUB Zone, Enterprise District, and federal medically underserved area.

In addition to safe and dignified emergency housing, Grove Street Shelter will provide supportive wrap-around services to the 210 people being served on site each year. Services will include mental and physical health care, drug and opioid abuse treatment, group and individual counseling, case management, benefits assistance, life skills and nutrition education, employment training, and transit to services not available on-site. Facilities will include classrooms, nurse’s offices, a dining area, and an outdoor courtyard. The facility is expected to provide healthy food access to 600 people in Middletown annually.

“Middletown residents face a growing need for emergency housing and it was critical that our community step up to the plate and provide safe emergency shelter for individuals and families facing homelessness. Grove Street Shelter could not have been expanded without the NMTC financing that Finance Fund and their partners brought to the table. This allocation and the new facilities for people in housing crisis will be nothing short of life-saving,” said Reverend Tim Williams, Executive Director of Operations at Hope House Mission.

The development of Grove Street Shelter is part of a broader plan that will include the development of 30 permanent supportive housing apartments to serve the chronically homeless, as well as a new office space for Hope House. This practice of “housing in place” allows individuals facing the greatest barriers to stable housing to move along a continuum of care, from temporary emergency services to permanent supportive housing, with higher rates of long-term success.

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