Hope Manor

Hope Manor Joliet was one of several outcomes of Silver Cross Hospital’s 2008 announced plans to build a new 77-acre facility in nearby New Lenox. A fixture of the city of Joliet’s east side since 1895, the hospital’s leaders promised the city and community that the site’s redevelopment would benefit Joliet residents’ quality of life. This promise led to the creation of the Silver Cross Healthy Community Commission, a group comprised of 17 eastside Joliet community leaders and hospital administrators tasked with redeveloping the 35-acre campus.

The first major improvement initiated by the Healthy Community Commission was the 2013 opening of a Veterans Administration (VA) mega-outpatient clinic in the former Silver Cross Emergency Department; which required the petitioning of VA secretary Eric K. Shinseki by local veterans’ groups and lawmakers to open negotiations with Silver Cross, where he eventually agreed to purchase the 4.4-acre property. Shortly thereafter, Silver Cross donated 2.2-acres of the campus and provided $550,000 in operational support to non-profit healthcare provider Aunt Martha’s for the opening of a federally qualified healthcare center (FQHC). Then, in 2014, recognizing the critical demand for affordable supportive housing for veterans in Joliet, the Healthy Community Commissions approached non-profit affordable housing developer Volunteers of America Illinois (VOAIL), one of the largest owner/operators of affordable housing in the country with two supportive veteran housing developments in Chicago, with interest in transforming 8.8-acres of the campus’ surface parking lots into supportive veteran housing.

With widespread support for the development from both the community and city leadership, VOAIL readily accepted the proposal to build its fourth supportive veterans’ housing development on the campus and purchased the 8.8-acres from Silver Cross for $25,000- just enough to cover the property transfer costs. Additionally, the city obtained and donated to VOAIL a piece of wooded land immediately adjacent to the site so that the proposed building density would comply with the area’s existing zoning regulations.

Designed by WJW Architects and constructed by JJ Duffy Co., Hope Manor Joliet is a complex of four 3-story apartment buildings surrounding a community park space with walking paths, a picnic area, and a playground. Prioritized for veterans and veteran-headed families, of the 67 total apartments, 32 are one-bedroom apartments, 18 are two-bedrooms, and 17 are three-bedrooms. In addition to being a veteran-headed household, all apartments are reserved for households earning up to 60% AMI. More specifically, 14 apartments are reserved for those earning up to 30% AMI; 24 are reserved for those earning between 30% and 50% AMI, and the remaining 29 are reserved for those earning between 50% and 60% AMI.

The “main” building’s ground floor provides ample space for various support services including a community room, classrooms, a business center and library, a training room, and a children’s resource room complete with computers, a play area, reading nook, and a homework area. These spaces are used by VOAIL and local community service providers to offer both residents and non-resident veterans services like mental health screenings, individual and family counseling, parenting classes, youth programs, peer support groups, access to recovery resources, job training, computer training, and food assistance, among others. On the top two floors of the main building are 32 one-bedroom apartments reserved for single veterans, and, because the main building is the sole structure among the four with an elevator, seven of the apartments are fully accessible. The remaining 35 apartments are all family-sized and reserved for veteran-headed families; with a mix of two- and three-bedroom apartments spread throughout the three other buildings. All apartments come fully furnished and feature fully equipped kitchens, forced heating and air conditioning, and high-speed internet access. In addition to being located directly adjacent to both the VA mega-clinic and Aunt Martha’s FQHC, Hope Manor residents are within walking distance of the elementary and middle schools, a PACE bus stop, two grocery stores, a public park, a restaurant, daycare, and church.