SOCIAL HOUSING DISCUSSIONS

SOCIAL HOUSING DISCUSSIONS

Navy Green, Brooklyn, NY, is a $146M new construction project consisting of 433 residential units in 4 multifamily buildings and 23 townhomes all organized around a 32,000 sf common green that is shared by residents and includes a children’s play area, open lawn, patios and gardens.

The project includes an innovative mix of supportive housing, rental apartments and home- ownership units serving very low, low, moderate, middle and high income households along with formerly homeless persons with psychiatric disabilities, with 89% of units being affordable. In designing Navy Green, the developers chose integration over segregation and the common green and its amenities are shared by all residents, formerly homeless and market rate alike.

The developers also chose open spaces over parking spaces, with bike parking incorporated in all buildings in lieu of car parking. Navy Green includes 7,000 sf of continuous retail space along Flushing Avenue to activate the streetscape and revitalize the corridor.

A few years ago, the city of Toronto came up with a new initiative that became a city policy: the Avenues & Mid-Rise Buildings Study. The study identified arterial streets outside downtown that were to be designated as “Avenues” where construction of mid-rise buildings, defined as buildings between six and eleven storeys, would be allowed.

The idea was to allow dense development in areas where high-rise buildings were considered inappropriate (mostly at the edges of neighbourhoods), and to improve the streets themselves with buildings that “define” the street edge, provide new retail and bring new residents.

Overall it was a good idea and in the recent years resulted in quite a few new mid-rise buildings that helped create the Missing Middle of the Toronto housing market and helped bridge the gap between high-rise buildings and houses. As a bonus, the new mid-rise buildings have been overall much more interesting than the typical new high-rise buildings.

A deteriorated public housing complex in New Orleans that had 724 units, of which only 144 were occupied, was redeveloped with HOPE VI funds and other financing. The new development has 460 rental units, consisting of 193 public housing units, 144 units affordable to residents earning up to 60 percent of the area median income, and 123 market-rate units. Rental townhouses are shown in the photo above. A total of 22 for-sale scattered-site units, affordable to residents with incomes up to 60 percent and 80 percent of the area median income, are also planned.

A multiyear study found that 84 percent of families no longer lived at the original HOPE VI sites but had moved, typically with relocation assistance, to private-market housing, mixed-income developments, or traditional public housing sites. On the other hand, residents who had used Section 8 vouchers to move outside the original sites said they had better housing, lived in safer neighborhoods, and had better mental health.

Mark Joseph, assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, said that those residents who were able to move back to new mixed-income developments reported high satisfaction with their units and the surrounding physical environment and described a range of associated benefits, including lower stress due to reduced safety concerns.

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