By TRACEY DRURY
tdrury@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1609

A Buffalo nonprofit has received $800,000 in new grant funding to expand long-term transitional housing for former inmates.

Peaceprints Prison Ministries received the state and federal funds to convert a former rectory of a closed Catholic church into a 12-bed facility and administrative space.

The agency last summer bought the former Holy Apostles SS. Peter & Paul Church and rectory from the Catholic Diocese with a donation from philanthropist Stephen Schott, former co-owner of Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics.

The site at Clinton and Smith streets will now be converted with a $76,000 grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and a $738,000 grant through the state Homeless Housing Assistance Program.

Plans call for moving the agency's Cephas House residence to the facility, more than doubling its size. Administrative offices were already relocated to the site.

The former Cephas House on Abbott Road will be converted into supportive housing for individuals who graduated from other Peaceprints programs.

In a separate deal announced this week, a different church by the same name - the former SS. Peter & Paul Church in Depew - was sold by the Catholic Diocese at auction to Dr. Anthony Francis for $800,000. Francis plans to use the Burlington Avenue property as a group home for foster children.

The new grants will more than double overall revenues at the agency, which had total income in fiscal 2009 of about $550,000.

Peaceprints Prison Ministries was created in 2009 after the merger of Hope of Buffalo Inc., founded in 1987, and Cephas Attica Inc., founded in 1977. The organizations provide transitional housing, support groups and other programming to help former prisoners re-assimilate into the community, as well as programs for children with incarcerated family members.