A New Standard of Living
With its angular, contemporary facade, ramped courtyard and townhouse units, the Casa Verde apartment building in Hollywood doesn’t resemble what most people think of as “affordable housing.” And that’s just the point.
Affordable, public, or low-income housing still conjures up a nasty image, one of remotely located, boxy, prisonlike buildings commonly called “the projects.” Today, architects are trying to erase that stigma by designing visually interesting and innovative small-scale apartment complexes that can mix seamlessly into residential areas, mimicking roof lines, picking up on neighborhood architectural details and echoing colors. Interiors of such structures have evolved, too, expanding to allow more air and sunlight. Three- and four-bedroom units, sometimes in townhouse configurations, are built to accommodate larger families. Open courtyards foster a sense of community and added security.
Casa Verde and many others like it nationally are gradually changing many people’s minds about affordable housing. But the uphill battle continues, as the nonprofit organizations that often initiate and build such housing continue to bump up against angry, fearful prospective neighbors. As architect Stephen Albert put it, “People [even too young] to know about Chicago’s Cabrini-Green still have that stereotype. We’re trying to prove that these can be friendly environments, but it’s one project at a time.”
The responsibility for funding affordable housing projects began to shift from the federal government to private nonprofits, developers and city housing departments in the 1970s, but a dramatic change occurred when the government severely slashed funding in the 1980s during the Reagan administration. At the same time, the need for additional funding was growing with the increase of homelessness and the AIDS crisis.
Nonprofits get funding now from a variety of sources, including federal, state and city money, tax credits and private donations. Some groups build or renovate housing for just families; others help seniors, the disabled, homeless people, those with HIV/AIDS, or a variety of groups. The need shows no sign of abating. The Hollywood Community Housing Corp., which built Casa Verde, estimates that for every new or renovated multi-unit building, it receives some 1,000 applications.
The nonprofits usually work with a small group of architects and developers with the skills and desire to design and build affordable housing. Site constraints, budget limitations and approval from neighbors present specific challenges that not every architect wants to take on.
At Casa Verde, architects William Roschen and Christi Van Cleve of Roschen Van Cleve in Hollywood had a small lot (96 feet by 144 feet) on which to design a high-density building--30 units--ranging from singles to townhouses, with rents from about $300 to $500. Their goal, says Roschen, was to “devise a careful, practical and social strategy” that would “integrate into the neighborhood without looking like a large block.” Although the complex at Selma Avenue and Schrader Boulevard is built right up to the sidewalk, not allowing for much of a buffer from the street, its courtyard provides “a sloping landscape that has a sense of sequence when you move through it, so you feel there’s a natural quality to the thing as a whole,” Roschen explains.
The courtyard also contributes “great daylight and a sense of security as well as a real sense of community--the socializing spaces are really key,” says Roschen, who’s now designing a retail/housing complex at Sunset and Vine in Hollywood. For him, Casa Verde is about more than just building a building: “We really do believe that architecture should be a balance of politics and aesthetics, and the whole idea of working with nonprofits is a huge part of that. We really feel compelled to contribute, and housing kind of brings a lot of those things together under one umbrella.”
Carlos Hernandez, 51, has been living in a two-bedroom Casa Verde townhouse for a year and a half with his two children, ages 18 and 14. Before that they lived with one other person in a one-bedroom Silver Lake apartment.
“I like the fact that this is a corner apartment, and it has the sense of being very airy, very comfortable,” says Hernandez, a store stock clerk. “I like the fact that the environment is very hospitable, and it gives me a sense of peace.” He adds that he feels less depressed living there, and is attending adult school. His children, he says, are happier, too.
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In Santa Monica, Frederick Fisher of Frederick Fisher and Partners in West L.A. considers the style of his apartments on 16th Street contemporary, with references to the city’s existing architecture in its roof lines and overhanging eaves, split design and bold colors (the building comprises two sections with an open stairway in the middle). The challenges that he and partner Joseph Coriaty faced with this structure, built by the Community Corp. of Santa Monica and completed in 1999, were familiar.
A prominent architect who recently designed the new Long Beach Museum of Art, he began his career 20 years ago by creating housing for artists who wanted low-cost innovative dwellings. Says Fisher of his apartment complex: “When you do housing like this, you have to be committed to do the highest quality environment for the people there. The challenge is balancing the quality of the units, the building itself and its relationship to the neighbors. And that’s all part of the fun.”
But replacing the old image of affordable housing with the new is something with that Fisher still struggles. “People have to have alternative models, and when you’ve improved somebody’s quality of life through your craft as an architect, that is very, very satisfying.”
Livier Barba can talk at length about her quality of life. She, her husband, Gabriel, and their five children were crammed into a one-bedroom Santa Monica apartment before moving into Fisher’s 16th Street complex two years ago (the Barbas also co-manage the building). In their former home, the 41-year-old Livier recalls the children “had no place to do their homework or play, and sometimes they’d want to invite their friends home, and I’d say, ‘No! It’s going to be really hard for us.’ ”
Now, in their three-bedroom, two-bath apartment, there are places to play and study, and Livier reports that the children’s grades have improved. She describes the building as “a little neighborhood. It’s like a big family.”
Across town in the neighborhood between Echo Park and Silver Lake, the under-construction Benton Green apartments overlook the busy 101 Freeway, their modern, boxy shape broken up by small towers. Other details of the building, built by developer Kaifa Tulay of Global Housing, include decks and spots of bright and muted colors. While designing the complex, architect Stephen Albert of the Albert Group Architects in Culver City canvassed the neighborhood, noticing trellises on many homes, and incorporating similar elements as wood-beam awnings over the decks. Small overhangs above front doors that face the central courtyard “try to re-create the front porch,” he says, adding to a sense of community.
“I grew up in Boston in apartment buildings, and I knew what it was like to play around there, creating my own little world in a very small slice of territory,” says Albert, who also designed a mixed-use retail/housing complex in Hollywood. “So I know that every square foot is precious. Personal space is important. To find a place to do your homework without someone screaming at you is important.”
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What’s happening in L.A. mirrors similar programs elsewhere. Instead of building more enormous prisonlike projects like Chicago’s Cabrini-Green or L.A.’s Jordan Downs or Nickerson Gardens, builders are opting for single and smaller multifamily dwellings. The most dramatic example is the revival of the South Bronx in New York, once considered a horrific blight on the city. Though there are still bad pockets, the area is filled with flourishing neighborhoods, and employment is up.
Boston hosted a competition this year to design affordable housing, sponsored by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston and the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Assn. Teams of area students, faculty and developers submitted not only architectural plans but also a community outreach program and environmental impact study.
In the last few years, a group of Seattle architects has created a grand plan for replacing 900 run-down housing units there with a new development that incorporates low-income, moderate-income and market-rate housing. In Baltimore, a development designed to replace an old public housing complex was one of four projects to receive Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects this year for outstanding regional and urban design.
In Los Angeles, nonprofits and developers continue to buy up property and decaying buildings to keep up with the growing need for affordable housing. L.A. County’s population is expected to increase by a million by 2010.
The Los Angeles Housing Department, the city’s housing agency that funds most of the new and renovated affordable housing, estimates that a mere 800 to 1,000 units were built last year. That’s down by half from about 1996, when the department suffered severe budget cuts as developers and other city agencies increased competition for funds. A report last fall said Los Angeles has the worst rental-housing crisis in the country; the average low-end monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles is $899.
Not every area of the city and its environs is desirable for building; housing needs to be accessible to mass transit and near to services such as grocery stores and schools--one reason downtown L.A. isn’t considered family-friendly yet.
“People tell us we’re not building apartment buildings fast enough,” says Christina Duncan, Hollywood Community Housing Corp.’s executive director. “But what are we supposed to do, not build any? . . . There are many groups like ours out there, and we’re all creating similar products, but products we hope will have long-term life.”
Affordable housing could flourish even more if cultural institutions became more involved, says Richard Koshalek, former head of the Museum of Contemporary Art and since late 1999 the president of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. In 1987, MOCA sponsored a competition to build an affordable housing complex, an idea that grew out of the museum’s exhibition, “Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses.” The result was the 40-unit Franklin Family Housing apartment building in Hollywood at the corner of Franklin and La Brea avenues.
Although the project, done in conjunction with the Hollywood Community Housing Corp. and the Community Redevelopment Agency, had terrible budget overruns and time delays, Koshalek says he’d do it over again. And he is in a sense: “Los Angeles Now: Shaping a New Vision for Downtown Los Angeles,” a project at the college begun last year, brings together students and architects to develop large-scale planning and design ideas.
“I think it’s critically important that cultural institutions have convictions and believe in their ability to have a serious impact on the larger world,” he says. “They have a responsibility to bring their expertise to solve major problems that confront society. It’s the way we should be dealing with our problems--not sitting there acting like solutions aren’t there. We need to bring the right people together.”
