“My father would be both honored and proud of this new affordable housing community that bears his name,” said state Sen. Dina Neal, D-Nevada, at the groundbreaking ceremony Thursday. The project is named after her father, the first Black state senator in Nevada, Joseph Neal Jr., who died in 2020.

“I want you to think carefully about what it means to attach my father’s name to this building,” Sen. Neal added. “It means that he turned this family into a housing advocate.”

Located near I-15 off East Tonopah Avenue, the central location will give preference to people over 55 who make between 30-60% of the median income. Units will be either one- or two-bed homes.

Nevada and the Las Vegas area are currently facing an affordability crisis, with a need for 32,192 more homes to be built in the Las Vegas Valley, as per a recent Zillow report. Since last year, access in the area has decreased 6.8%.

“Construction has helped prevent the housing deficit from ballooning, but it hasn’t yet begun to close the gap,” Zillow Senior Economist Orphe Divounguy said in a press release. “We know what works: lower building restraints to allow for more density and less expensive housing. More of these measures at the local level can help get more homes built and begin to ease this outsize financial burden for millions of Americans.”

While Thursday’s groundbreaking represents one of the biggest recent affordable housing projects for the area, a much larger development has just begun across town. 

In East Las Vegas, the publicly owned Desert Pines golf course has just been cleared for a $17.5 million sale, which will be used to create over 1,500 housing units, the vast majority of which below the market average. Completion on the project is not expected until 2036.

North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown told KLAS Las Vegas, “We know that projects like the Sen. Joseph M. Neal, Jr. Apartments are transformational for residents, allowing them to live in comfort, dignity, and safety.”