Construction making progress at Providence Pallet shelter village after multiple delays
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — The final stages of construction work are underway at Echo Village in Providence where Pallet shelters will eventually house the homeless.
The project has faced its share of delays.
The ‘rapidly-deployable’ shelters were originally supposed to open in June, then the fall.
Now leaders say they’ll open this winter but a move-in date has yet to be announced.
“It’s been challenging,” Laura Jaworski from House of Hope said. “Forty-five beds matter and make a difference to 45 Rhode Islanders who otherwise don’t have a place to go.”
The final stages of construction work are underway at Echo Village in Providence where pallet shelters will eventually house the homeless. (WJAR)
The House of Hope is ready to help move people into the shelters once final inspections are passed.
They’ve shared job openings online looking for people to work at the site.
For months, construction work was unable to take place as the state tried to figure how to fit the unique shelters into the building and fire code.
“It’s been really, really difficult to see this growing need of shelter and housing on on the streets, and then to at the same time, trying to bring on an innovative response, and see it continue to get delayed and delayed through our process,” she said.
The remaining work includes final utility hookups, adding fire retardant paint, and a fire suppression system.
Once that’s done, final inspections can take place and a certification of occupancy can be issued.
Then, people will be able to move in.
The House of Hope is ready to help move people into the shelters once final inspections are passed. (WJAR)
“I think the real opportunity that remains is for us to continue to come to the table and say, ‘how can we at least learn from this experience?’ You know, the delays that echo village is having are not anything unusual or abnormal for the normal process that we go through to develop housing in Rhode Island,” she said.
Despite the hurdles, Jaworski is hopeful these challenges will help improve housing hurdles ingrained in the system.
“I think there’s always opportunities to look back,” she said. “Where are the opportunities to come creatively to the table and figure out ways that we can move things forward? Can we give conditional approvals? Can we give variances? Can we rewrite some code? There’s all these opportunities that we need to start addressing, and it’s just simply because echo is now such a high profile and visible project, right? It’s illuminating all of these challenges. And so I think the real travesty will be if we don’t respond and we let a project like Echo Village open and we don’t learn how to address our system.”