Project HOME relocates women’s program to new Wynnefield site

Kelli James moved into Project HOME’s Women of Change residence in June after she was evicted from her house and hospitalized for depression.

She moved again a week ago, when the homeless services nonprofit transitioned the program to a new home on Parkside Avenue in Wynnefield known as Joyce’s Place.

“So far, it’s been very nice living here,” James said during a grand opening event. “It’s great to finally have a room with a door. The staff is wonderful and respectful. They treat us like human beings as opposed to just a thing.”

Project HOME officially opened Joyce’s Place, its newest residence, on Wednesday. Like the Woman of Change site, it is designed as a low-barrier safe haven facility for 25 recently homeless women who are struggling with mental illness, substance abuse disorder and/or a physical disability.

Unlike Women of Change, which was located at 20th and Arch streets, Joyce’s Place offers private rooms and outdoor space, and Project HOME owns the property. The Center City facility had flooded multiple times in recent years, said Annette Jeffrey, the organization’s vice president of development and communications.

Residents are provided three meals a day and are assigned a case manager who helps them develop goals and obtain public assistance, Project HOME representatives said. The goal is to eventually move them into more independent housing.

Joyce’s Place also has enough space to accommodate additional shelter beds during a Code Blue, which is triggered when temperatures are at or below 20 degrees due to wind chill or when it is 32 degrees and lower with precipitation.

Pierce and Katie Keating, of Daniel J. Keating Company, a general contractor, purchased the property and contributed to renovations. Project HOME was able to finish the project thanks to an $878,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation, officials said.

The Parkside Avenue building was constructed in the 1920s as the Edwin Forrest Home, a residence for aging actors. Names of some of the long-gone performers are preserved on the doors of the bedrooms, and a stone inscription above the entrance quotes Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

Project HOME named the facility after Joyce Moran, a longtime volunteer for the nonprofit who died in 2009.

“The Project HOME mission – ‘No of us are home until all of us are home’ – was a core belief of my mom’s and so was unconditional love,” her daughter, Lauren Moran, said.

“So I cannot think of a more fitting day to open Joyce’s Place than on an Ash Wednesday Valentine’s Day,” she continued. “The first as a holy day of prayer and fasting and the second a universal celebration of love in all of its forms.”