Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland came home to Houston on Tuesday to cut the ribbon on the Knowles-Rowland House, a 31-unit housing building in Midtown for people who have lived with chronic homelessness. Tina Knowles stood with them, and Beyoncé’s daughters Blue Ivy and Rumi helped cut the ribbon.
The building stands on ground Destiny’s Child fans know. The Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth opened there in 1999, a gym and youth center paid for with money from the group’s first single. Hurricane Harvey damaged it in 2017, and a fire gutted it in 2021.
The ceremony sat next to St. John’s Downtown Church, where Beyoncé was baptized as a kid. She told the crowd, according to the Houston Chronicle: “I made the choice on my own to be baptized because I felt the spirit here, and I feel the spirit right now.”
“I made the choice on my own to be baptized because I felt the spirit here, and I feel the spirit right now.”
Beyoncé, at the Knowles-Rowland House opening
The $8.4 million rebuild is three stories. Sixteen of the 31 apartments were built for residents with mobility or sensory impairments, and nobody just gets a key and a good luck wish. Through Bread of Life and Temenos Community Development Corporation, residents get case management, mental health counseling, substance use treatment, life skills training and help with food.
The first residents move in on November 1, referred through the Coalition for the Homeless. Twenty seven years after two teenagers put their first hit money into a youth center, the same ground is putting roofs over 31 households.
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