By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
With the goal of helping eliminate youth homelessness Pivotal Point Transitional Housing in St. Joseph is ready to break ground on a new youth facility.
Pivotal Point Executive Director Melissa Frakes says serving youth is not new for the transitional housing facility.
"You know we've been serving some youth 17 to 20 over the past four years, and when I came on board five years ago, we had two teenagers in our building," Frakes tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "And we realized pretty quickly that we really didn't know what we were doing but we just prayed a lot and we used the adult program."
Frakes says it was an easy transition to apply the adult program for teenagers. Pivotal Point has served 35 youth over the past four years, but has had to turn away more than 100 due to lack of resources.
Frakes says the new facility is designed specifically for youth ages 17 to 20, and will provide new programs more for them. She says none of this would have been possible without community support and Pivotal Points already existing programs
"Honestly we wouldn't be able to serve the youth if it hadn't been for the knowledge we had from the adult program," Frakes says. "And so, we have just over the last three years piloted that program and then made the adaptations that we need to for it to serve youth."
Frakes says the project was originally designed to develop one home that would house 12 to 14 youths ages 17 to 20.
"Then as we did that and as we saw the number of applications, this property will allow us at some point to build a second building just like the first," Frakes explains. "Or we may tweak it, after we get this first building going, we may decide hey we need to tweak this a little bit, but the goal would be to have a second building at some point as well."
Currently, the project is a two-phase project, with the groundbreaking for the first home completing phase one. The groundbreaking will be held on September 22nd at 11am.
The current phase two of the project would be another $2 million home designed to house 12 to 14 more youth.