Wylie’s Jericho Village aims to redefine affordable housing

Residents are moving into Jericho Village in Wylie, a 38-unit income-based community on a 2.46-acre site that Agape Resource & Assistance Center says is meant to move families from housing instability to long-term stability.

The Plano-based nonprofit serves women, mothers and their children facing situational homelessness, and its transitional housing program typically keeps families for six months to a year while they work with case workers and counselors toward self-sufficiency. Jericho Village is being built as an extension of that work, with transitional-housing assistance and other support services intended to help residents stay housed and rebuild.

The project is designed as more than a row of apartments. Plans call for a community center, community garden and playground, along with income-based rent and an approach Jericho Village describes as an affordable, desirable and inclusive community in Collin County. NBC 5 reported the development will have 38 units with income-based rent, while the Texas State Affordable Housing Corporation highlighted the project in a development spotlight on Dec. 6, 2024.

Wylie has already been dealing with the proposal in public. A city agenda item shows the Wylie City Council approved a 2023 resolution supporting a rent-based community for very low to moderate income households at 511 W. Brown Street, and Agape representatives discussed the project with council during a work session in February 2021. That history matters because the project is being positioned not as an isolated building, but as a local test of whether housing can be paired with structure and services in a fast-growing suburb.

The financing also underscores the scale of the effort. Local Profile described Jericho Village as a $9.6 million rental housing initiative and said $4.6 million in equity had been raised at the time of its report. Agape’s own materials identify the project as a new venture building on its Housing 4 Hope program.

The stakes are larger than one site in Wylie. Texas Housers says the state has a deep shortage of affordable housing, and KERA has reported that Texas’s poorest renters face a shortage of 679,000 affordable rental homes. In Collin County, a housing forecast says 85,448 more housing units are needed over the next five years, while USAFacts says just 1% of county residents live in subsidized housing, compared with 1.8% statewide. In a county where housing costs keep pushing workers farther from jobs and schools, Jericho Village is being watched as a model for whether supportive, income-based housing can produce lasting stability rather than another short-term stop.