Campus for homeless residents gets leader

Volunteers of America to operate community

Louisville Metro Government has selected Volunteers of America to operate the Community Care Campus, a project proposed by the Greenberg administration to combat homelessness, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Thursday.

Volunteers of America Mid-States is headquartered in Louisville and has operated Unity House, a family emergency shelter, for close to 40 years. The organization released its initial plans for the campus, which include goals to create several affordable housing units and offer emergency services and health care to Louisville’s unhoused community.

The former Vue hotel building, 822 S. Floyd St., will be converted into a “family emergency shelter” that will have a commercial kitchen, a play area for children and a group meeting space. It will be able to house up to 34 families at a time.

The campus also will include a nonemergency shelter nearby, on South Shelby Street, with about 80 housing units. The program, called Monarch Station, will have a combination of one, two and three-bedroom units and will be a mix of permanent supportive housing and affordable housing, according to a release from the VOA. The VOA also aims to:

Partner with local healthcare agencies to provide medical respite to 30 people at a time

Provide individualized case management to assist families returning to stable housing

Create an outdoor open space Develop strategic planning to determine other community needs

Relocate its headquarters to the campus

Involve the business community to support operations

Determine potential future usage of the space

The emergency shelter will most likely open first, in 2024, because it will have to undergo the least amount of renovations, said Mayor Craig Greenberg’s spokesman Kevin Trager.

Monarch Station is expected to open in the spring of 2025.