Family Promise unveils Glendale container village for homeless

By Richard Smith
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South Glendale now features another innovative solution to the affordable housing crisis after a Tuesday morning grand opening.

Family Promise Legacy Village debuted May 6 as community-based small-scale housing for families. The 22 units feature six repurposed 640-square-foot ocean containers transformed into fully furnished small apartments.

Legacy Village, on the campus of Iglesias Dios de Segunda Oportunidad at 6242 N. 59th Ave., is designed for families who have experienced homelessness. Families can move in starting June 1 by calling Family Promise of Greater Phoenix, which will put together a waiting list.

“The genesis of the project was to figure out how to develop affordable housing that is infill. It’s very rare,” Family Promise CEO Ted Taylor said. “This particular church, they have 3.84 acres. We could use about an acre of it to develop a housing project so the families could be inside the community, where they could be close to school and close to work instead of being on the outskirts where the parents are pulled out of their family’s lives.”

Family Promise works with 54 congregations,

BHHS Legacy Foundation is the seed founder on the village and contributed the greatest amount toward it.

“They believed we could do this, even though it had never been done in the Valley, building out of containers in this kind of configuration and full solar on the top. It’s amazing,” Taylor said. “They were at the heart of this.”

Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Garcia Family Foundation, Fiesta Bowl, The Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, SRP, and the Arizona Housing Fund also contributed to the project.

In particular, Taylor thanked The Fiesta Sports Foundation, which contributed the development’s playground and a sports court.

Family Promise partners with Head Start, Deep Behavioral Health Care, Iglesias Dios de Segunda and the city of Glendale pitched in to put the project together.

“There were volunteers from the city building our fence. The columns, those are with the city’s help to build them. And they have little messages painted on rocks by the children,” Taylor said.

Glendale brought water to the site.

Mayor Jerry P. Weiers was on hand to cut the ribbon Tuesday.

“This village will provide families in need with a chance to get their life back on track,” Weiers stated in a press release. “Family Promise has done a great job in developing quality homes at this site and will provide wrap-around services to the residents living here.”

Using containers decreased costs, Taylor said. Each two-bedroom home cost about $101,000 to manufacture.

He said Family Promise devised this community model with more conventional houses 13 years ago in its South Scottsdale location, with the homes ringing a central courtyard.

“Homelessness is partly a problem of a lack of housing. So we really needed to get into the housing space, which we are. But we knew if we didn’t bring community to those developments, we really miss the whole purpose of bringing families in,” Taylor said. “We’re doing something very unique and very innovative here that we know works. So you know, 86% of the families that go through our units end up in permanent housing and be sustainably housed.”

Richard Smith
Senior News Editor | Glendale & West Valley Preps

rsmith@iniusa.org

Richard Smith has been with Independent Newsmedia since 2016, and worked at a Sun City-based news outfit covering the Northwest Valley for 22 consecutive years.

An NAU alum and lifelong Arizona resident, Richard began as a copy editor and page designer at Surprise Today and the Daily News-Sun, then rekindled his love of sports writing by taking the reins on West Valley Preps in 2008.

For most of the mid-2010s he was the Surprise editor and West Valley Preps reporter. Now he’s the West Valley Preps Editor and Surprise Associate Editor.

As COVID restrictions slowly lift, Richard is cautiously optimistic he will visit book stores, football fields and gyms again this fall.