Youth Crisis Center Opening next summer

JASMYN, the Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network, kicked off a $700,000 building renovation project Monday that will help the city’s growing number of homeless young people.  The Youth Safety Net Resource Center will be part of JASMYN’s partnership with two other nonprofits, Youth Crisis Center and Changing Homelessness Inc., to meet service needs of homeless youth ages 18 to 24, many of whom are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning.  The center will be in a newly acquired building adjacent to JASMYN’s existing two-building campus at Peninsular Place and Chelsea Street in Riverside. Expected to open next summer, the center will offer case management, showers, hot meals, laundry and other services.  “The center will enable us to really focus on ... being the ‘front door’ for homeless youth,” said JASMYN CEO Cindy Watson, and give them a safe “place to land.”