The new home of homeless services center SEARCH opened at 2015 Congress Ave. this morning, next to the Loaves & Fishes soup kitchen and across 59 from Minute Maid Park. The 27,105-sq.-ft. facility’s design has been greened up since last summer‘s pass-around of renderings for the space — in addition to the color on the exterior walls, renewable energy company and regular grocery-store-front proselytizers Green Mountain Energy footed the bill for some solar paneling and other energy-efficient upgrades. Operations at the organization’s fifties-mod space on McGowen St. (which got that unintentional contemporary update to its facade back in 2014) will end around June 24th.Â
Below is a recent-but-still-mid-construction look at the new building from the corner of Franklin and St. Emanuel streets, showing the structure in place across Congress from the Cheek-Neal Coffee building, (which, unlike the homeless services building, appears to be explicitly spared by some of TxDOT’s potential future freeway expansion plans):
***
- Previously on Swamplot: SEARCH Homeless Services Will Be Moving from Midtown to This New Building in East Downtown; The Strange Thing Last Month’s Fannin St. Collision Did to the Front of the Search Homeless Services Headquarters Building
Photos: SEARCH Homeless Services
As if that side of town is not crappy enough already. Imagine the urine smell wafting for several blocks in all directions.
Star of Hope Womens, Star of Hope Homeless Shelter, Star of Hope Headquarters with Apartments, and Star Homeless Shelter.
Now we need to build more affordable housing because the area is gentrifying too fast.
Nice to see that SEARCH is moving on up to the east side (of downtown). I’m sure the building took a lot of planning and work – here’s wishing them great success in their mission.
Nice building, although the construction-yellow pilings are a bit garish for such an up-an-coming, hipster/helpster district such as HoBo (Homeless Borough).
Ugh, things we just can’t seem to figure out. The number one for homelessness is lack of affordable housing. All the free market housing/gentrification only satisfy whatever builders build that they can sell at a predetermined price/ sq ft. Bleh.
I wonder what homelessness was like when Houston had boarding houses and shotgun shacks? Remember that the downtown Y had rooms for rent?