Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 11, 1995                   TAG: 9509110130
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                                 LENGTH: Medium

FORMER HOTEL NOW HOUSES HOMELESS

``This is not a shelter. It is permanent housing,'' said Barbara Barnes, director of housing for Virginia Mountain Housing Inc., the private, nonprofit agency based in Christiansburg that spearheaded the project.

The former Hotel Warwick opened its doors last week after seven years of disuse. Rent is subsidized with federal dollars, just like rents at other privately owned, low-income housing projects in Newport News, Barnes said.

``We hope it will be a transition for people to improve their self-sufficiency,'' she said. ``But some will live here for a long time.''

The Warwick has 88 one-room, one-person apartments. Virginia Mountain Housing runs a similar project in Richmond.

Only homeless people who earn less than $13,000 a year qualify, and they may not stay if their income moves beyond that for a full year. For rent, residents must pay 30 percent of their income each month. The rest of the $330 charge will be paid by the government.

Alice Saunders, 42, is one of the Warwick's new residents. She had been homeless for half her life.

``I'm not going from house to house and place to place. I'm not sleeping in parks. I am happy,'' Saunders said from the side of her dormitory-style bed this week. ``I got a house. I got a home. That's a good feeling.''

The Warwick, a seven-story brick building, was built in 1928. Each room is furnished with a single bed, desk, night table and chest. There are two lamps and a mini-kitchen with microwave and refrigerator.

Virginia Mountain Housing spent $2 million renovating the Warwick, using government tax credits and donations, Barnes said.

The project has also received a number of leg-ups from private businesses, she said, including cut-rate laundry room rates and low-cost furnishings.

Private investors, including Del. Alan Diamonstein, D-Newport News, tried in the mid-1980s to revive the Hotel Warwick. The effort failed, and the city supported Virginia Mountain Housing's proposal in 1990 as a way to get back the $500,000 it had lent to the investors. Downtown was better off with an occupied building than an empty one, officials argued at the time.