Louisville's Hope Village celebrates opening, plans for residents to move in this week

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville's Hope Village is now officially open.

The village is considered a safe outdoor space for dozens of people within the city's homeless population to live outdoors in a designated lot off East College Street.

The village can house about 50 residents, who will live in tents. They can begin moving in Tuesday. Men, women and their pets can stay at the Hope Village.

Tents at Hope Village — Dozens of tents are located at Louisville's Hope Village at 212 East College Street. Each tent has a cot, storage containers, hygiene items, and access to electricity.

"This is a great day for the city of Louisville, for this community, for all of us," Rev. Stachelle Bussey said.

Bussey is the founder of The Hope Buss, a local nonprofit focused on working with people to meet their needs. In January, the city announced the The Hope Buss was chosen to oversee the Hope Village.

The space includes outdoor tents, showers, toilets, electricity, and access to services such as housing navigation, substance abuse counseling, mental health resources and more.

"It's been a lot of work up to this point, but the real work starts now," said Bussey. "All of our solutions, I think before, were just the same things over and over, so this, I feel like turns the tide of solutions being real."

Residents at the Hope Village will live there on a referral basis only. Those referrals will come from other nonprofits working to provide homelessness services in the community.

Bussey said several referrals have already come in.

"Louisville has a lot of work to do," said Angel Todd, director of operations for the Hope Buss. "We say we're a compassionate city and this is one of the ways that we're going to be able to do that and show that to people."

Monday, the Hope Village hosted an official open house, allowing community members to tour the campus and ask questions. There was also a ribbon cutting to celebrate the milestone.

"It is the realization of a dream," Todd said.

Sara Turney is a care manager at the village. She said her role will be to help create a community environment through planning and organizing programming such as gardening, art and yoga.

"Every single person has a story and every single person deserves a level of care beyond what they are on a piece of paper," said Turney.

Sara Turney gives tours during open house for the Hope Village — Sara Turney, a care manager, gives community tours Monday during an open-house event for Louisville's Hope Village.

Turney said being part of the Hope Village is, in a way, fulfilling a personal promise she made to help others.

"I wanted to be part of the solution," she said.

Turney said she was previously homeless herself, and spent a little more than one year on the streets.

"I know what that's like on a level that ... if you've never been there ... you can't really understand," she said.

Community members who came to tour the village Monday wrote welcome letters to the residents who will be moving in.

Bussey said she believes this could be the first of many Hope Villages for the city. The goal with this program is to connect people to resources and provide a bridge for permanent housing.

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