Traugott Terrace will be one of his stepping stones.

Miles, a former narcotics abuser, is the first resident of the Archdiocesan Housing Authority’s new facility for low-income former drug and alcohol abusers who are determined to turn their lives around.

The six-story, 50-unit building in downtown Seattle’s Belltown district opened last Thursday — the first such clean-and-sober housing facility in the state.

Miles moved in Thursday night, the same day that his six-month-stay at a transitional housing shelter also operated by the AHA had expired. While he wasn’t worried about finding another place to live had not Traugott Terrace been available, he said he’s grateful to at last have a permanent and affordable home.

Being here...is a sense of having your own place, finally, finally, capital FINALLY,” he said. “It’s a relief. You don’t have to (endure) the stress to where you’re going next.

“If you don’t have a big income,” he added, “affordable housing takes a tremendous load off your hand.”

Currently clean and sober for the past four-and-a-half years, Miles isn’t earning a big income in his part-time job working with foster children. But he’s planning to take a real estate course and try his hand in the industry. Now that he has a permanent home, he can better set his sights on that goal.

The facility at 2317 Third Ave. is named after the late Traugott “Tom” Zurcher, a Swiss immigrant who with Greg Alex co-founded what is now AHA’s Matt Talbot Center, which provides recovery programs for drug and alcohol abusers. The housing units are built over the center.

The facility represents the final component of their vision for their ministry with recovering substance and alcohol abusers, said Alex, the center’s director. “This idea was really built by God in the hearts of Tom, myself, and a lot of other people,” he told a crowd of religious, civic and business leaders and others who gathered Thursday for an open house and blessing ceremony by Archbishop Alex J. Brunett.

“‘Traugott,’ in Swiss, means ‘trust God,’” Alex noted.

Zurcher’s widow, Margaret, said her husband of 42 years would’ve been proud of the spiffy new building that bears his name. “He’d probably yodel,” she said.

She said her husband’s compassion for others was a life-long trait. “People always seemed to come to him with their problems, even from way back...His youngest (brother) was a Down’s syndrome child ...and he always tagged along with Tom. Apparently there was something about him that drew people to him.”

Built with city and state funds along with funds from HomeStead Capital and Key Bank, the $6.5 million facility is owned by a limited partnership and will be managed by the AHA.

Its 38 units of permanent housing for single men and women range from 350-square-foot studios to 550-square-foot one-bedroom units. Twelve other units are for transitional housing, each offering 250 square feet of space, and designed for men only. Transitional housing residents will be able to stay for up to two years while going through the Matt Talbot Center’s recovery programs.

Rents for most units will be no more than 30 percent of the resident’s income, said Joe Thompson, AHA’s director of Affordable Housing. Ten units will have a fixed monthly rent of $400.

All the residents will be in some kind of recovery program, either at Matt Talbot or elsewhere. “For some people, that could mean just a commitment to go to a certain number of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings a month,” Thompson said. “For other people, it would be a commitment to a more formalized patient treatment program. So it depends on the person and their needs, and how long they’ve been sober.”

Before moving into Traugott, residents must have been clean and sober for 45 days for transitional housing, and 90 days for permanent housing.

Thompson says all the units will be occupied by the end of August.

Prior to the open house, Archbishop Brunett and Auxiliary Bishop George L. Thomas, who chairs the Catholic Community Services/AHA Board of Trustees, blessed the six-story building.

The archbishop noted later that people  who aren’t struggling to get by can sometimes overlook what a facility such as Traugott Terrace can mean to people — until they hear testimonies from Calvin Miles and other residents.

“We’re on the outside looking in,” the archbishop said. “We don’t realize how much it transforms the lives of people.

“At Traugott Terrace, residents know even before moving into these beautiful facilities that this family will make a difference in their lives,” he said.

Thompson said the facility was made possible by a recent amendment to the state Landlord-Tenant Act which enables clean and sober housing programs to more easily evict a resident whose relapse threatens the recovery of other residents.

It’s modeled after similar legislation that was passed in Oregon, which now has 1,100 units of clean and sober housing, Thompson said. “It gave investors and managers a lot more confidence to pursue this type of housing” in Oregon, Thompson said. He hopes the same will happen here.

Though opened just a week ago, Traugott Terrace is already making history. In September, it will become the nation’s first affordable housing project to receive Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, according to Katie Hong, director of the Seattle Office of Housing.

It also received the city’s first SeaGreen Award for its energy and environmental practices. They include low-flow plumbing fixtures that will reduce water usage by a third, saving $9,000 a year; a gearless traction elevator that will save $2,000 annually; energy-saving lighting and window designs; and the use of recycled materials.