Friends of Sinners is about 1 month away from opening half of their new facility at the corner of 8th and Jackson streets, and the team is looking forward to leveling up their style of care.
Development Director Jordan Wilson said their current location on Clay Street has been a great home since they opened, but the organization had outgrown the space. After being awarded a $100,000 grant from Impact100 earlier this year, FOS was able to finally make a move.
“Those houses were great and they’ve been a blessing, but they weren’t built for what he used them for,” Wilson said of the current facility. “This (new) place is built for a lot of people — it’s an old school.”
He said only the east building will open for now as they get furniture moved in along with the clients, while the west building still awaits renovations. Both buildings will house male residents only.
The east building has about 10 dorms that will house two clients in each room and will have living and kitchen spaces. In addition, Friends of Sinners will have live-in staff who work with the clients.
“It’s just really important when you’re doing residential recovery to have someone who is the same sex on the property. We have the same situation with the women’s house. If stuff hits the wall at 2 a.m., we will have a staff member right there,” Wilson said.
Wilson said the larger space will allow FOS to serve up to double the current number of clients (they max out at 50 right now), but they don’t expect to go over about 85 because they don’t want drop their level of car by being stretched too thin.
“Honestly, in this facility, we could probably put up to 100 people but we won’t. The reason we won’t is not that we don’t have the space, but we want the level of care for our clients to be top notch and we do one thing really well at Friends of Sinners, and that’s the relationship aspect,” he said.
Wilson said they still plan to connect to clients the same way, especially with office spaces to be located in the west building. After the east building opens and clients move in, FOS will focus on preparing the west building for clients to move in.
