Some of Lawrence’s most hard-core homeless residents soon may leave the streets.

The Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority announced Tuesday it would receive a $328,928 federal grant to create a “Hope Building” that will permanently house up to 15 homeless people who are mentally ill, addicted or have physical disabilities.

“This is looking at the hard-core, homeless street population,” said Barbara Huppee, director of the city-county agency.

The program will provide mental health and substance abuse counseling to its residents, Huppee said, in cooperation with other local agencies.

“We will be building them toward readiness for work,” she said.

A site for the program has not yet been found, Huppee said. Depending on how long it takes to find a site, officials said, the “Hope Building” could be open within the next few months.

The city’s leading advocates for people who are homeless celebrated the news Tuesday.

“Wow — that certainly seems like great news,” said Steve Ozark, co-chairman of the Lawrence Coalition on Homeless Concerns. “It’s very encouraging to have that most needy part of our population attended to.”

The administrator of the Salvation Army, which runs a city-subsidized homeless shelter, agreed.

“I think it’s a good deal,” Rich Forney said. “It’s a lot of money for 15 people.”

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But he warned: “Some of the people on the street we deal with don’t fall into those categories.”

Charlotte Knoche, chairwoman of the city-sponsored Lawrence Continuum of Care Committee, said her board surveyed the city’s homeless population in spring 2003 to see how their needs could be met. Not surprisingly, “housing” was listed as a top item.

“We identified this as a gap … the availability of permanent housing for people who are homeless, particularly those who are disabled,” Knoche said.

But another top request, Huppee said, was that any program not break up the bonds among the city’s homeless.

“They wanted to keep intact their community,” she said.

The program will accept only the “chronically” homeless, defined as someone who has been on the streets for more than a year or four times in the past three years.

The agency will take a bigger role with the “Hope Building” than it does under its traditional housing programs. Under Section 8, for example, the agency subsidizes rent payments for low-income Lawrence residents but otherwise mostly stays out of the landlord-tenant relationship.

Under the homeless program, the Housing Authority will act as property manager, directly overseeing the housing for the landlord.

The Housing Authority provided a $25,000 match to lure the federal funds, Huppee said. The grant is set to expire in three years, but the agency can apply for renewed federal funding. If continued funding is not available, Huppee said, residents in the program will be moved to traditional Section 8 housing.

“Once we’re able to get someone housed and get them services,” she said, “they’ll move forward.”