For decades, developing housing for the homeless has proved challenging. One reason is that the demographic has often been simplistically defined as a single cohort whose problems were due to a few causes–mental illness, physical challenge, job loss. Another reason is that many solutions focused only on immediate results–temporary housing to get people into a shelter at night and get them out come morning.
Recognition at last of the group’s diverse ranks has proved a huge step toward developing long-term options. It’s now known that men, women, and children of a wide range of ages and backgrounds may be homeless and number as many as 650,000 on any given night, or 2 million a year, says Dennis Culhane, professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Family homelessness is said to be the fastest growing segment, according to Sam Davis, author of Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works (University of California Press).
The diversity of this population is leading appropriately now to diverse permanent housing solutions. In some cases, scattered-site housing spread among different buildings works best and residents find it less stigmatizing than congregate housing, which appeals to others who seek camaraderie and the ability to partake of on-site social services, medicare care, and recreation. In still other solutions, supportive housing and market rate units are co-mingled for both genders and families, and buildings reach out to their community through attached schools and cultural facilities.
With so many possibilities, many experts say the smartest plan is for developers and architects, usually working with public and private partnerships, to cherry pick from a smorgasbord of options to cater to the specific needs of residents living in a specific area. More innovative strategies keep emerging, often at universities where new courses spark discussions about how best to be more inclusive and sensitive to this population’s needs and contribute positively to the built environment.
At the Woodbury University School of Architecture in Burbank, CA, Jeanine Centuori, AIA, chair of undergraduate education and Director of the Architecture + Civic Engagement Center, opened students’ eyes to the real-life challenges of the homeless by bringing on board architect Theresa Hwang, as adjunct professor. Hwang’s other job is as a community architect at the Skid Row Housing Trust, a nonprofit developer that has worked to end homelessness in LA’s Skid Row neighborhood, said to have the country’s highest concentration with between 3,000 and 4,000 on the street and in shelters within one square mile.
Over the last 24 years, the Trust has constructed 24 buildings with a total of 1,700 units. But a roof over someone’s head isn’t enough, Hwang says. Her organization’s approach has been to include social services on site, which permit residents to access them easily, and bring in volunteers to introduce residents to community activities such as gardening and yoga to integrate them into a neighborhood. It also listens closely for input from residents, staff, and the community. Laundries in one building were placed on each floor for an aging population who didn’t want to cart clothing far, Hwang says.
One of the Trust’s newest projects, Star apartments, has garnered attention for innovativeness on several fronts. While limited budgets historically have dictated basic concrete and stucco materials and purely functional design, Michael Maltzan Architecture Inc., transformed an existing one-story building into a starkly modern, window-filled, five-level structure that houses 102 efficiency units for men and women, plus staff apartments, and 15,000-square feet of community space that will be occupied by year-end. Construction from pre-fabricated modules cut building and installation time and costs, and made the envelope tighter. While color is important to project an optimistic spirit, this building was designed primarily in whites with blue accents to stand out from its gritty surroundings. The project is scheduled to be certified LEED Gold as a Homes Pilot Project. “The building will help to give residents a feeling of living in a home they can be proud of, and contributes to the built environment rather than just houses people,” says Tim Williams, project manager.
Color, natural light, and landscaping can all play a powerful role in making a building appear friendlier and inviting, which architect David Baker, FAIA, LEED AP, of David Baker + Partners did with two San Francisco projects–the 1 1/2-year-old, lime green Drs. Julian + Raye Richardson apartmetns for singles and the month-old multicolored Bayview Hill Gardens for families and some singles. Richardson has a landscaped courtyard that faces an existing mural, roof garden, open exterior stairway that links levels, and glass-lined residential halls. Bayview includes a courtyard, 8,500-square-foot edible garden, and is located near light rail since most residents don’t own cars. The developments do still more. Baker believes strongly in incorporating small medicalfacilities on site or nearby. “You can’t force people to get treatment, but if they’re close by they’re more likely to do so, and can serve the community,” he says.
How a building is placed contextually is also a growing focus. Washington, D.C.-based Studio Twenty Seven Architecture, in conjunction with Leo A. Daly, designed a permanent supportive housing prototype for 40 men called La Casa encouraged by D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and D.C.’s Department of General Services and Department of Human Services. The seven-story building going up in the Columbia Heights neighborhood was set back from the street and landscaped to soften its urban site. Its two-story light-filled lobby is meant to be a “lantern on the street,” says architect John K. Burke, AIA. It also has an outdoor courtyard and green roof.
When buildings are large enough, they can serve multiple functions. This was the case when the Neighborhood Services Organization, a nonprofit that provides social services for the homeless, took over the 1929 253,000-square-foot, vacant Bell telephone building in Detroit. Area architects Fusco, Shaffer & Pappas Inc., transformed the NSO Bell Building into 155 450-square-foot apartments that are large enough to house two individuals. The building had ample room for common spaces that NSO considers critical for socializing, providing help, being outdoors, plus square footage for its own corporate offices. Because of the limited budget, the architects relied on colorful paint and tiles indoors rather than expensive furnishings and decor and Detroit landscape architects Kenneth Weikal Landscape Architecture and Deak Planning and Design took a similar approach at ground level and on roofs with drought-resistant materials, native trees, low-water use irrigation and concrete scored decoratively, so all would survive the urban environment and climate and not require much maintenance. A “hut” to park bicycles encourages independence, ways Weikal. The building’s adaptive reuse has spurred neighborhood change.
Paseo Verde in Philadelphia represents a more integrated model with 120- one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and townhomes that are 67 market-rate and 53 affordable, but with no visible distinction between them. “It’s a way to pull the less well off forward,” says Nilda Ruiz, president and CEO of the nonprofit developer, Association Puertorriquefos en Marcha (APM). Design by Philadelphia architects WRT, the building also includes services related to childcare, parenting, and finances. Its green roof and transit-oriented location have made it the first LEED Green certified neighborhood development nationally.
Some equally forward thinking is blurring the lines between a building and its community, a concept that Ellen Baxter says has slowly evolved since she founded the nonprofit Broadway Housing Communities in New York 30 years ago. Her organization’s Sugar Hill Development, on the border of West Harlem and Washington Heights where 7 percent of children are born into poverty, was designed by stararchitect David Adjaye to include 134 studio-to three-bedroom apartments for individuals and families–25 for homeless, 98 affordable apartments for those at 30, 50, 60, and 80 percent of AMI, and one for a superintendent. It also includes an on-site pre-school for 120 children and adjacent new children’s museum.
This building is so important because it will serve the neighborhood’s poorest when it opens next spring. We learned that the integration of truly affordable housing with educational and cultural arts opportunities has an exponential impact, says Baxter. “The combination draws diverse public and private funding sources, creates a foundation for the future, and is centered on neighborhood children, the most vulnerable citizens in poor communities. That’s where we should begin, and hope that the model can be replicated in any community of deep poverty,” she says.
The ultimate goal, according to Davis, is to develop a new paradigm that treats well designed housing as the norm to meet the needs of diffferent family types with different needs–an entitlement similar to kindergarten through 12-grade education and health care.
Image courtesay of Fusco, Shaffer & Pappas, Inc., and photographer, Christopher Lark, Inc.
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