GILROY
– With a bulldozer and backhoe as a backdrop, approximately 50
dignitaries and homeless advocates gathered Friday afternoon in
north Gilroy to celebrate, well, a pile of rubble.
GILROY – With a bulldozer and backhoe as a backdrop, approximately 50 dignitaries and homeless advocates gathered Friday afternoon in north Gilroy to celebrate, well, a pile of rubble.
The mishmash of concrete and boards used to be the Serra Apartments, a former motel at 9345 Monterey Road that nonprofits South County Housing and the Emergency Housing Consortium will replace with a state-of-the-art center to help transition the homeless into stable and productive lives.
The planned Sobrato Transitional Center will feature a 140-bed year-round reception center with a bevy of social services such as job training and a 60-unit transitional apartment complex with case managers. The area’s current homeless shelter, the National Guard Armory on Wren Avenue, provides more limited services and operates in winter only.
Officials hope to begin construction on the apartments in late 2004 and the center in April 2005. Construction of 13 market-rate homes that will help fund the project is slated to begin this week.
The reception center is expected to cost $6.4 million and the transitional apartments $15 million.
