A New York City apartment complex is set to house up to 500 children for up to a year, including children under the age of five, according to local media reports.
The news comes after a rash of unvaccinated children across the country were hospitalized with fevers, and a spate of unsupervised outbreaks in states including Pennsylvania and California.
The move comes as the New York Department of Health announced last week that it had closed an outbreak of measles that began in Pennsylvania and resulted in more than 1,000 hospitalizations, two deaths, and hundreds of hospitalizations and cases.
In the weeks following the outbreak, more than 300 New York children were placed in care, including some who were unvaccinate.
The new plan for the children’s residences in the Bronx is expected to start in early April.
The apartments will be owned by the New Yorkers for Children organization, and they will be available for rent to households, according the local station WCBS.
The program will run from June 1 to September 1, and each family will be able to bring in up to four kids, the station reports.
“We want to be an advocate for the child,” said Andrea Caruso, a spokeswoman for the New Yorker Foundation, which will manage the program.
“These are the kind of kids that we want to support, we want them to feel safe, we really want them here.”
While the plan has not been finalized, the plan includes an array of amenities for the residents, including a gym, a tennis court, and fitness center, as well as a separate kitchen.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said that he wants to see an “autonomy for our children” in the state, which is facing a rising tide of unconfirmed cases of measles and other diseases.
The governor is also urging New Yorkers to vaccinate their children, and the city has pledged to vaccate all New Yorkers.