Renovated Flood House in North Adams Ready to Give Shelter
Louison House Executive Director Kathy Keeser leads a tour of the house last week.
The first family — a mother and her four children — were set to move in this past week to a second-floor apartment.
"There's a couple little things in a few places," said Louison House's Executive Director Kathy Keeser during a tour of the completed building for local officials last week. "Luckily upstairs, the one that's going to be for the one with the youngest family, she wants to be in her own apartment for Christmas. So it's really exciting for her."
The manse will now offer permanent housing in two apartments on the second floor and a handicapped accessible unit on the first floor as well as emergency shelter for teenagers and offices for Louison House.
The reopening of Flood House closes a chapter for the Louison House emergency shelter that began with a devastating fire in July 2016 at the original Adams location.
With Louison House damaged, the North Adams Housing Authority agreed to a temporary lease for the Flood House on Church Street in North Adams and later transferred the building over to Louison House.
The Adams house, now dubbed Terry's Place for founder Theresa Louison and to avoid confusion, opened last year with room for 22 people needing temporary shelter and two permanent housing units. The $1.7 million project included the updates to Flood House that started early this year.
About $200,000 was invested in the property by the Housing Authority a decade ago. The more recent work included new kitchens, bathrooms, interior doors, security, paint and other amenities.
The completed second-floor apartments are clean and bright, and feature new off-white cabinets, appliances, fully renovated bathrooms and closets. Both have access to a back staircase that leads out to parking on the south side of the house.
The second floor also has a bunkroom for temporary shelter for youth. They will be able to use the first-floor community kitchen and living room, which may also be used for shelter.
The kitchen is called the Turner House Kitchen to recognize the former veterans home contribution.
The Turner House gave us a contribution, a very nice contribution when the Turner Fund closed from the Turner House in Williamstown," said Keeser. "We were probably the closest to them in the housing thing. We even took in their last veteran."
There are several offices, bathrooms and storages areas on the first floor and a handicapped accessible one-bedroom unit.
The downstairs apartment is room with a combined kitchen, living room and dining area, separate bedroom and large bathroom. It is one of two apartments with a nonfunctioning fireplace.
Keeser said the gentleman selected for the apartment was shocked to see how much space he was going to have.
The units are affordable housing and tenants sign a lease but it is a voucher system with agencies submitting people through a selection process.
"We do a coordinated entry process and they needed to have housing issues and other homeless issues," Keeser said. "Otherwise, why would they be coming to be helped by Louison House?"
Flood House was constructed in 1893 by William Arthur Gallup at a time when Church Street was filled with stately single-family homes. His daughter and son-in-law lived in the house for many years. Keeser said Gallup descendent Rachel Branch was going to tour the house for a program to be televised on Northern Berkshire Community Television.
By the 1970s, it was being used to house developmentally challenged individuals. City Councilor Wayne Wilkinson, who attended the tour, recalled how he had visited the group home often as director of the greenhouse program where the residents worked. He'd held his engagement party in what is now going to be the living room.
The house was purchased by the Housing Authority in 1982 and leased to Berkshire Family and Individual Resources, which had continued the program. Louison House has been providing transitional housing since its founding as the Family Life Support Center in 1990.
It took more than three years to get all the funding in place and the two-house project completed, said Keeser, with help from private donors such as Williams College, public funds, insurance and state grants.
"There were some other private contributors and then the banks gave us money, and then that helped us to get the money from the state," she said. "So we had all of those pieces going behind it to make it happen. ...
"What we'll do is sometime next spring, or when the weather's better, have some kind of ceremony to thank everybody. Like the North Adams Housing Authority who helped us get this building in the first place, the city of North Adams that did all kinds of things with us behind the scenes to help get the state to allow us to do this as a shelter. So lots of people to thank."
Tags: affordable housing, louison house,
