A new $9 million facility in Central City opened Friday combining a 150-child early learning center with four affordable housing units next door, part of a small but growing local effort to fuse childcare and housing under one roof. Wilcox Academy Central City includes 13 classrooms, three of them dedicated to infants aged 2 months to 1 year, plus fenced-in porches for outdoor access and a commercial kitchen producing 1,200 meals a day for children and their families to take home.
The grand opening on Thursday drew a second line down Washington Avenue and a performance from the St. Augustine High School Purple Knights Marching 100, according to NOLA.com. Founder and CEO Rochelle Wilcox, who grew up in Central City and started her first childcare center in her Lower 9th Ward home in 2006 before rebuilding in Mid-City after Hurricane Katrina, spoke at the event alongside Dana Henry. Wilcox was named Louisiana Early Childhood Leader of the Year in July 2022, according to Delgado Community College.
The facility, built on a Freret Street property Wilcox Academy purchased next to KIPP Central City in 2021, targets about 80 percent enrollment from low-income families while also serving tuition-paying students. Success coordinators on-site act as case workers, and the center offers on-site health screenings for both children and adults, part of what Wilcox described as a hub meant to address food insecurity and limited healthcare access in the neighborhood, per the same NOLA.com report.
A Complex Financing Puzzle Behind the Building
Getting the project built required stacking several funding sources. The $9 million development was supported by $8.5 million in New Markets Tax Credit allocations from MBS Urban Initiatives CDE, $5 million in Louisiana state tax credit allocations, and loans from Credit Human and the Low-Income Investment Fund, according to Novogradac. The project was also backed by Alembic Community Development and was jointly awarded a federal Health and Human Services grant tied to job creation.
That capital stack explains why the site includes only four two-bedroom affordable housing units on an adjacent lot rather than a larger residential complex. Federal New Markets Tax Credit rules cap residential rent receipts at no more than 80 percent of total property income, effectively limiting residential construction to under 10 percent of total development costs, Novogradac reported. Federal guidelines also prevent the facility from exclusively renting the units to teachers of its own students, even though staff retention is part of the goal.
Residents in the housing units will be enrolled by United Way and Credit Human in a two-year budgeting and credit-repair program, NOLA.com reported. In December 2024, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and Agenda for Children created a $3.875 million Early Childhood Education Facilities Grant Program funded by local property tax revenue, awarding an initial $250,000 grant to Wilcox Academy Central City, according to a New Orleans Redevelopment Authority announcement.
A Second Project Down Louisiana Avenue
Wilcox Academy Central City is not the only local project pairing housing with childcare. A century-old firehouse at 2312 Louisiana Avenue is being redeveloped by People's Housing+ and Alembic Community Development into seven HUD fair-market affordable rental apartments above a ground-floor early learning center serving up to 65 children, according to WWNO. People's Housing+ and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority broke ground on the $8 million renovation in 2024, and that project was also jointly awarded a federal Health and Human Services grant for job creation.
Aireca Anderson, who owns Inquisitive Thinkers Learning Academy, will open an early childhood education center in the redeveloped firehouse, with People's Housing+ set to begin offering childcare there in October and begin leasing the residential units in September, per NOLA.com. Oji Alexander, CEO of People's Housing+, said the cohabitation model of affordable housing and childhood education can be replicated elsewhere, the outlet reported.
The Scale of Unmet Need
The need both projects are trying to address is significant. Wilcox has said that New Orleans has about 6,000 children without access to early learning, and she noted that eligible children still remain without funded early-learning seats even as new capacity comes online, according to NOLA.com. The city's City Seats program, funded by a $21 million millage approved by voters in 2021 and matched by state funds, includes about 1,000 early childcare seats.
That millage traces back to a 20-year, 5-mill property tax New Orleans voters approved in April 2022, estimated to generate $21.3 million annually for infant and toddler early education, according to the Bureau of Governmental Research. Louisiana's Early Childhood Care and Education Fund matches those local tax dollars dollar-for-dollar, combining with the city's millage to yield roughly $42 million annually for Orleans Parish early childhood care, per Entergy. Even with that investment, an estimated 59 percent of low-income New Orleans children under age 4 lacked access to high-quality early childhood care before City Seats expanded, according to Agenda for Children.
Housing Pressure Adds Urgency
The push to co-locate housing with childcare also reflects broader affordability strain in the city. More than 60 percent of New Orleans renters are housing cost-burdened, paying over 30 percent of income toward rent, while nearly one-quarter of the city's population lives below the federal poverty line, according to the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. That pressure falls heavily on the same workforce staffing these classrooms: a July study by the New Orleans Collaborative for Early Childhood Research found local early childhood educators earn an average hourly wage of $13.28, driving turnover so severe that nearly one in three preschool teachers are actively seeking new jobs, as Hoodline previously reported.
Wilcox Academy first opened a location on Southern University at New Orleans' campus in 2023, expanding its footprint beyond its Mid-City rebuild. With Wilcox Academy Central City now serving roughly 150 children and the Louisiana Avenue firehouse project set to open its doors this fall, the two developments together represent an early test of whether combining classrooms with apartments can chip away at both the city's childcare gap and its housing cost burden at the same time.
