Investing in Bed-Stuy

At the intersection of Do the Right Thing Way, a street in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn named for the iconic Spike Lee movie, stand two adjacent Brownstones that Providence House has called home for over twenty years. With our strong roots in this community, we could not ask for a more ideal location to build out our Women’s Justice Program Expansion Project.

In partnership with ESKW/Architecture, our team created a plan to transform these buildings into the ideal setting for providing housing to women returning from incarceration. This included turning the first floor into a shared kitchen and dining area where residents can cook meals together, meet with program staff, and engage in the relationship building activities that are the cornerstone of our congregate housing model. We also converted each unit into a split space with a shared bathroom and kitchenette, and individual rooms allowing for a private space where the women can feel safe and secure.

With support from our amazing partners, including Trinity Church Wall Street, the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, and Affinity Legacy, we invested over $250,000 into the project. In May of 2023, we opened our doors to a site that was warm and inviting for residents.

Blanche Wright and Afi Turner are both Providence House Board members as well as former residents of our program. Upon touring the site for the first time, they affirmed the importance of our approach. As noted by Afi Turner —

“This is perfect. This is the kind of place where someone leaving Rikers can truly heal. It’s not intuitional. It doesn’t feel like a place you have to be, It feels like a place you want to be. It feels like a home.”