A fire took the Knowles-Rowland Centre for Youth in 2021, and on October 13, 2026, a building called the Knowles-Rowland House opened in its place in Houston. What went back up is not another youth centre. It is 31 permanent supportive housing apartments for people who have been without a home the longest, and 16 of the 31 were built for people with mobility or sensory impairments.
Beyonce, her mother Tina Knowles and Kelly Rowland were at the ribbon-cutting, which was held at St. John’s Downtown, the church where Beyonce was baptized. “This church was our foundation. I was baptized right here,” she said at the ceremony. The building is run by Bread of Life, a Houston nonprofit founded in 1992 that works with underserved communities.
The site had been taken out twice before this. Hurricane Harvey damaged the original building, which went up in 1999, and the fire four years later finished it. Harris County committed about $7.2 million in federal pandemic recovery money toward the redevelopment in 2023, when the project was estimated at $8.4 million. Bread of Life says the finished building cost $13.96 million.
The apartments are for people experiencing chronic homelessness. Every one of them is subsidized through a federal housing voucher program, and Temenos Community Development Corporation will provide services inside the building. The first residents are scheduled to move in on November 1, at 2019 Crawford St. in Midtown.
Thirty-one apartments are a small number against the size of Houston’s need. It is also the difference between a lot that held a burned building and 31 households with a door that locks, a federal voucher behind it and services in the same building. The names over that door are Knowles and Rowland, and the three women who carry them stood on the lot again to open it.
