BUILDING MAKES FOR ODD NEIGHBORS

Ex-convicts and single moms with children are about to start living
side by side in an unusual housing experiment that begins later this
month in Harlem.

One new tenant at the building, known as Castle Gardens, is Belkis
Alonzo. She and her 4-year-old daughter have been staying with
relatives for two years since her divorce, sharing a bedroom with Ms.
Alonzo's mother in a small three-bedroom apartment with her sister,
brother-in-law and nephew.

She'll be sharing the laundry facilities and roof-deck garden with
Carl Dukes, who served 31 years in an upstate prison for first-degree
murder.

"When I heard there would be people who were coming out of prison, I
said, 'Oh my god!' I was concerned," says Ms. Alonzo. But after being
told that the ex-cons had been carefully screened, and there was
security around the clock, she says she feels OK with the arrangement.
"We all make mistakes and deserve a second chance."

The building, at 140th Street and Riverside Drive in Harlem, is a
joint effort between developer Jonathan Rose and the Fortune Society,
a nonprofit group that helps the formerly incarcerated re-enter
communities.

Castle Gardens is offering 63 units to homeless people who have served
time. While Fortune says the crime committed does not factor into
resident selection, anyone convicted of arson, manufacturing
methamphetamines or is a lifetime registered sex offender isn't eligible.

There are 50 units for families or people who earn 40% to 60% of the
area median income. They will spend 30% of their income on rent. The
building has received more than 1,000 applications for the 113
apartments and expect to fill them all, Fortune says.

Castle Gardens relied on 14 different financial supporters-from
federal, city and state agencies to corporate foundations-to raise
$43.5 million to construct the building, which uses green technology.

Mr. Rose said Castle Gardens was loosely modeled after an earlier
project of his: the David & Joyce Dinkins Gardens, another green
Harlem development that mixes low-income units with those for young
people who have aged out of foster care. He says he believes "diverse
buildings are healthier than monocultures" because they broaden
perspectives.

Some affordable housing advocates offered measured support. "I can see
it creating some tension," says Benjamin Dulchin, executive director
of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, which
represents housing-advocacy groups. On the other hand, Mr. Dulchin
said that when well-planned and well-run, "integrated housing programs
can create a good living environment and meet multiple needs of the
community."

Fortune acquired a former Catholic girls' school, shaped like a stone
castle, at the corner of 140th and Riverside in 1998, next to the site
where the new project has been built.

Four years later, it opened the Fortune Academy as transitional and
longer-term housing for homeless ex-convicts willing to be drug- and
alcohol-free.

The community was hostile to the idea, says JoAnne Page, head of the
Fortune Society, but gradually came around.

The former school had been abandoned and deteriorated into a dangerous
crack den. After a period of time, the community began to see the
academy as an improvement that actually made the neighborhood safer.
"It has not been an issue for neighbors. We have had zero complaints,"
says Sarah Morgridge, executive assistant to City Council Member
Robert Jackson, who represents the area.