DePaul Community Health Centers has opened a new Community Resource Center in Central City, placing 20 community health navigators on the ground floor of the H3C apartment complex to help residents tackle food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation barriers. The 4,305-square-foot space sits at DePaul's Central City Health Center, 1300 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., inside a building that also houses an on-site federally qualified health center.
The center connects patients and community members with what DePaul describes as essential resources addressing social determinants of health, including insurance enrollment and financial assistance, according to WGNO. Michael Griffin, president and CEO of DePaul Community Health Centers, said the center connects patients with resources that can improve their overall quality of life. The community health navigators are meant to assist individuals and families in connecting to programs that improve their health and well-being, per the same report.
DePaul partnered with Gulf Coast Housing Partnership on the H3C apartment community, which opened in 2024 and includes 192 affordable homes. Kevin Krejci, chief capitalization officer at Gulf Coast Housing Partnership, said the opening expands access to critical resources and support services. The celebration marking the center's debut carried the theme Building Innovative Care Where It Matters Most, the station's report noted.
An $80 Million Complex Built for Health
The H3C development is an $80 million, 210,000-square-foot complex constructed on the site of the former Brown's Dairy processing plant parking lot along Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard and Baronne Street, according to Biz New Orleans. Gulf Coast Housing Partnership operates the H3C apartment community, and the project was designed to be the first building in Louisiana certified under Fitwel, a healthy building rating system created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the General Services Administration to encourage physical activity and occupant wellness through structural design, per a 2022 Gulf Coast Housing Partnership press release.
Of the 192 total affordable rental homes at H3C, 92 units in the Belle Reve building are reserved specifically for residents aged 55 and older, featuring built-in aging-in-place design features, according to the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition. The City of New Orleans committed $5.4 million in municipal funding toward H3C's construction, using local dollars to leverage additional state and federal housing money, the Gulf Coast Housing Partnership release states.
A Novel Health-Payor Investment
Healthcare insurer Aetna, a CVS Health company, invested more than $26 million in concessionary funding through R4 Capital to help finance the H3C housing and healthcare development, according to Enterprise Community Partners. That kind of direct investment from a managed care organization illustrates an emerging national model in which insurers fund affordable housing to address the social determinants of health that often drive medical costs. The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas also awarded Affordable Housing Program grant funds sponsored by Home Bank in February 2024 to help close gap financing for H3C and related Gulf Coast developments.
The Community Resource Center itself was supported by a discretionary grant from the federal Community Economic Development program, administered by the Office of Community Services within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, according to New Orleans CityBusiness. That federal support underwrites the non-clinical side of the operation, including the navigators' work connecting residents to food, financial, and transportation help.
Part of a Longer Central City Story
DePaul Community Health Centers traces its roots back to 1834, when the Daughters of Charity began providing health services at Charity Hospital, later operating as Daughters of Charity Services of New Orleans before rebranding under Ascension in July 2019. Today the organization operates as a Federally Qualified Health Center network across Louisiana and South Arkansas, serving more than 50,000 patients annually.
The new center also builds on a much longer investment pattern along the corridor. Over a 15-year period, Gulf Coast Housing Partnership and its development partners have invested more than $253 million across a 10-block stretch of the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard commercial corridor in Central City, according to a PlaceEconomics report. Hoodline previously reported on a related deal involving an Odyssey-linked nonprofit's purchase of the Bohn Ford building nearby, another piece of the neighborhood's ongoing redevelopment. A separate 2024 building collapse just blocks away on the 1400 block of Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard prompted evacuations, though no injuries were reported, underscoring the aging infrastructure the corridor's newer developments are meant to replace.
