Piquette Square is a 150-unit apartment project in Detroit to house and care for homeless veterans. Piquette Square offers comprehensive support services to help the veterans develop self-sufficiency and reintegrate into the community. Southwest Solutions developed Piquette Square and owns and manages it.
Services
The Piquette Square project is situated on the same ground where the historic Studebaker factory near New Center was destroyed by fire in 2005. The new four-story brick building, at 6221 Brush, consists of 150 affordable one-bedroom units, as well as 11,000 square feet of common area and commercial space. The first tenants moved into Piquette in June 2010.
Piquette Square offers mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, on-site job training, computer labs, educational programs and other support services to help the veterans develop healthy and independent living skills. Southwest Solutions is partnering with numerous human services providers, government agencies and veterans’ groups to provide access to these services. Piquette Square expands Southwest Solutions’ commitment to place homeless veterans in permanent supportive housing, an evidence-based and proven recovery model.
Piquette fosters a welcoming and dynamic environment. A calendar of regular classes, special events, and social programs engages tenants. These activities are facilitated by Southwest staff, partner program staff, interns and volunteers.
For apartment application information, please email Terri Lopez or call her at 313-297-1325.
Donations
Our major donation needed at Piquette is financial assistance to sustain the support services provided to the veterans residing there. These comprehensive services help veterans rebuild their lives and reintegrate into the community. To learn how to help ensure that these services continue, please email Emily Madden or call her at 313-481-3113 . You may also make an online donation.
Piquette Square has become a magnet for volunteers wanting to help veterans in need. To inquire about volunteer opportunities at Piquette Square, please contact Bindi Shah via email.
Masco Veterans Park at Piquette Square
The Veterans Park at Piquette Square is certainly a special and significant place. It not only serves the interests of those who have served, it is designed as a community space that contributes to the rebirth of a Detroit neighborhood that was once the cradle of the auto industry. The mission of the Park is to help veterans improve health and fitness and to provide a gathering place where veterans, their families and the community can connect.
Masco provided $100,000 for overall naming rights to the Park. Many organizations have contributed to create Veterans Park. MSHDA, Wayne County, and NeighborhoodWorks provided a total of $150,000 for environmental cleanup. Funds from donors have been raised through “Naming Opportunities.”
Donors include:
- General Motors’ Customer Care and Aftersales’ Veterans Affinity Group – two gifts of $25,000 each for the Park Entrance and the Flag Court, respectively
- Quicken Loans – $60,000 for the Basketball Court
- O’Brien Construction – $40,000 for the Garden Pavilion
- Chase Bank – $25,000 for the Gazebo
- Military Order of the Purple Heart – $25,000 for the Walking Path
- Knight Foundation – $20,000
- Home Depot – $23,800 for the Linear Garden
- Comerica Bank – $12,000 for two Picnic Tables and two Benches
- American Legion Auxiliary 17th District Association – $5,000 for the American Flag (one of eight flags in the Flag Court)
Other naming rights are still available. For more information about these opportunities to help build the Park, please contact Emily Madden at 313-481-3113 or via email.
We thank all of our donors for their generosity to make the Park a reality.
Funders for the construction of Piquette Square
- Michigan State Housing Development Authority
- Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago and its member bank, Bank of America
- Great Lakes Capital Fund
- Wayne County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority
- Development Corporation of Wayne County
- Michigan Economic Growth Authority
- NeighborWorks® America
- City of Detroit
- Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority
- Corporation for Supportive Housing
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ)
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Veterans Administration for Project-Based Vouchers
- Spartan Foods
Need more help?
Results
The vast majority of the veterans who move into Piquette Square will never be homeless again.
90% of the veterans maintain stable, independent housing for more than one year.
92% of the veterans at Piquette Square report they are “significantly better off” since they moved in.
Piquette Square helps revitalize the historic Milwaukee Junction neighborhood, which was once known as the “Cradle of the Automotive Industry,” but had fallen victim to blight and abandonment
Piquette Square is not only an important development in addressing homelessness in the city, it contributes to the ongoing growth of the New Center area by adding additional housing units and 5,000 sq. ft. of streetfront commercial space along Piquette Avenue (the commercial space has been rented to the VA for its new Veterans Community Resource and Referral Center)
The 3.28-acre facility is conveniently located about a mile and a half north of the VA Hospital and the Detroit Medical Center
The net square footage of the building is 106,000 sq. ft.
Piquette Square more than doubles the number of long-term supportive housing beds available to homeless veterans in Michigan
The total project cost of about $23 million was financed through a combination of tax credits, bond funding, MSHDA chronic homeless funds, and various grants