Mission
Meet Our Village
New Life Village, a unique residential community for families helping to prevent children from entering or removing children from the foster care system. The Village opened its doors in 2012 and is located in Tampa, Florida – an area which is heavily impacted by both the affordable housing and foster care crises. NLV is an intergenerational community designed to support families raising foster to permanency and kinship children who have survived abuse, neglect and traumas, offering them program-rich, below-market housing and onsite wrap-around services.
The Village was designed for the foster-adoptive-kinship families now providing these children permanency and serving seniors seeking intentional mission-focused retirement. Our community-driven intergenerational housing and integrated onsite services improve health and wellbeing, housing stability, and educational attainment for residents at all stages of life. The Seniors living at the Village serve as surrogate grandparents, tutors and mentors to neighboring children. Autonomous families live at the Village which is not a “Group Home”.
The Village program allows children to realize safety, housing stability, permanency, healing and the ability to thrive within a trauma informed community. We serve 52 households, approximately 170 residents, 113 of which are children, by offering them an Affordable Housing Program and an onsite Trauma Informed Wellness, Resilience and Character Development Program.
New Life Village was recognized by the Florida Civic Advance with the 2019 Honorable Mention FCA Civic Excellence Award for Intergenerational Civic Engagement and named Small Nonprofit of the Year, 2022 by Tampa Bay Business & Wealth Magazine. New Life Village has also been recognized by the Florida Council on Aging as the 2024 Florida Power and Light Quality Senior Living Awards “Service to Senior” award recipient. New Life Village is the only community of its kind in Florida!
Why Do We Exist?
Nationally…..
- There were 369,000 children in foster care in 2022 Children’s Bureau
- Foster children, on average, wait 3-4 years or more to become adopted and spend about 12-20 months in care Get the Facts: Foster Care & Adoption
- Over 200,000 children age out of foster care annually, leaving many homeless Department of Health and Human Services
- The US spends about $11.0 billion annually focused on child welfare Congressional Research Service
In Hillsborough County…..
Hillsborough County is amidst both a Foster Care and an Affordable Housing crisis. There are simply not enough affordable housing options for seniors and low-income families, and there are also not enough foster homes for the volume of children entering into the system of care.
As of 2024:
- Florida is 3rd in US, behind California and Texas, with over 22,000 children in foster care
- Hillsborough County is #1 and Pasco/Pinellas County is #2 in the state for the amount of children placed in foster care
- As of March 2024
- Hillsborough County Circuit 13: There are approximately 2,556 children in foster care
- Pinellas/Pasco Circuit 6: There are approximately 2,679 children in foster care
