Century Villages at Cabrillo could begin demolishing old housing next week as it makes way for a new development that could result in a net gain of 50 new units on its 27-acre campus in West Long Beach.

The Villages at Cabrillo offers permanent and short-term housing for 700 veterans as well as families and other individuals. Brian D’Andrea, the senior vice president for Century, said that the 40 units set to be demolished were vacant and the resulting project will replace them at a more than two-to-one rate.

The proposed project will replace old Naval housing stock that had been rehabilitated with newer, more energy-efficient apartments, D’Andrea said. The resulting building will provide tenants with private units instead of the congregate-living where rooms were private but residents shared a kitchen and bathrooms.

Villages at Cabrillo has roughly 1,500 people living on its campus on any given night, D’Andrea said, and because some of its housing is transitional it actually serves over 1,900 people on an annual basis.

The city’s last homeless count showed that 175 veterans were either unsheltered or in some other form of shelter and D’Andrea said the project could help bring some of those people off the streets and into Cabrillo’s campus.

“This will address 50 of those, incrementally, but the reality of this is that those units are all going to be leased up,” D’Andrea said of the 90 new units proposed in the project. “This should move the needle significantly in addressing the incidents of veteran homelessness.”

Part of the project’s process was having the Long Beach Planning Commission approve a lot split at the property, a technical move that will redraw the parcel lines on the campus to allow for the project to move forward with construction. The commission voted unanimously Thursday night to approve it.

D’Andrea said that the roughly $44 million project is being financed through a variety of vouchers issued by the federal government to support veterans being housed, along with other commitments from the state, county and even the Long Beach Community Investment Company.

With all of the funding committed, D’Andrea said the group could break ground next spring and have it completed by 2023.