Around the Corner, Phoenix Warehouse District (Photo credit: cobalt123)

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee

Two weeks ago, Betty Kelleher was sleeping with one eye open in a noisy, putrid downtown parking lot with about 250 other homeless people. Today, she sleeps on a full-size bed in a studio with such good air-conditioning that she gets cold if it’s on too long.

Her new place is modest: a bed, a sink, a stove, a small fridge and a closed-off area with a toilet and tub. But it’s home. And for Kelleher, who has been homeless on and off for three years, it means hope.

Lime green and mustard yellow walls add a splash of color to an already sunny hallway with floor-to-ceiling windows. The rooms come fully furnished – including pots and pans, soap, shampoo, and a TV.

“It’s so much better than the streets. It’s like a castle,” Kelleher, 58, said, sitting on a newly washed blanket on her bed while pinto beans simmered on the stove.

Kelleher is one of 90 chronically homeless people who will have a home at the newly refurbished downtown Phoenix housing complex by next month. A third of the property’s nearly 300 units will house the area’s most desperate population, easing some of the strain on an overflow parking lot near the state Capitol where homeless people have congregated for the last three months.

The move-in to the apartment complex is among several efforts in the Phoenix area to quickly find housing for the chronically homeless. Those defined as chronically homeless have a documented disability and have been on the streets for a year or more, or have been homeless on and off at least four times in the past three years.

Read More  Program gets homeless off streets, into own apartments.