Seven years in the making, the Providence Place Apartments were greeted with tears and applause at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday.
The YWCA of Greater Baton Rouge has unveiled 12 new modern apartments to provide safe, affordable housing for people fleeing domestic violence.
The plan to provide long-term housing to victims and their families was born out of Louisiana Housing Authority aid funds left over from the 2016 floods. Beachwood Residential CEO Wendy Daniels approached the YWCA to decide how to use the funds. After meeting with YWCA CEO Diana Payton, the team decided to help victims of violence get a new start.
At a ceremony Thursday attended by about 50 people, Payton said stable housing helps victims recover, allows them to focus on their physical and mental health and provides for their families. Without long-term housing, victims must balance recovering from their abuser with finding a safe place to call home.
She spoke about her own experience getting out of an abusive relationship.
“I started out with nothing,” Payton says, “and ended up renting a furnished house. It made the move a lot smoother because I had everything I needed and I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to sleep.”
Payton hopes that by coming together as a community to help, it will reduce the shame and stigma felt by victims of violence. In 2021, 31 people died as a result of domestic violence in East Baton Rouge. Nationwide, one in four women will face intimate partner violence in their lifetime. The YWCA has assisted more than 7,300 women in the past year, 71 of whom were victims of domestic violence.
Planning for Providence Place began in 2017. Payton said the $3.4 million project ran out of funding and nearly fell by the wayside when the pandemic hit in 2020. But East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor and Parish President Sharon Weston Bloom stepped up to see the project through to completion, and Greater King David Baptist Church provided the long-term property lease.
“It’s been a group of women that made this project happen,” Payton said, “Women helping women, and it’s been amazing to watch it develop.”
Before the ribbon cutting, Bloom emphasized the importance of the YWCA in the community. She said the partnership that brought this idea to fruition will change the lives of women and children for years to come.
Mayor Bloom called the apartments a “sanctuary of peace” and said they’re just the beginning of providing more long-term support to victims of domestic violence in the city.
“I hope this gives optimism and hope to others who are struggling to overcome domestic violence,” Bloom said.
Lindsay Bruin, director of legal services for the YWCA, said the legal services division has helped more than 200 victims of violence access counseling since it launched in July 2023. Providence Place and the legal services division are part of the YWCA’s long-term plan to expand services for victims of violence.
“for [Payton] These are long-term relationships,” Bruin said. “We’re not just doing ad-hoc solutions and sending people off and saying, ‘Good luck.’ We feel like it’s a real community and that’s what we’re trying to impact.”
For safety, the apartments are equipped with license plate and facial recognition surveillance cameras linked directly to the police, and residents pay rent based on their income.
The organizations involved in the completion of Providence Place were:
Louisiana Housing Authority City of Baton Rouge and Parish of East Baton Rouge Greater King David Baptist Church HOME Bank Beachwood Residential NRK Construction Williams Architecture Belizal Interiors
The women and their families are expected to move into the fully-furnished apartments in August. Daniels spoke of gratitude and hope to the crowd on Thursday after a tearful recitation of Derek Walcott’s poem “After Love.”
“At the end of the day, we welcome all women,” Daniels said.
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