When affordable housing becomes a community investment

This past April, La Maravilla, known as “The Marvel in the Mission,” broke ground in one of San Francisco's most famous neighborhoods. Planned to be one of the largest affordable housing complexes in the area—boasting 400-plus units, including 136 for extremely low-income households and formerly unhoused residents—it can lay claim to plenty of superlatives to complement its thoughtful layout and design. 

Architect Melissa Iris Garcia, AIA, a principal at Herman Coliver Locus Architecture, was part of the team that made a concerted effort to reflect the rich cultural tapestry of the immediate surrounding neighborhood, set in the city-designated American Indian Cultural District. The focus of Garcia’s career and her firm has been designing well-thought-out affordable housing with nonprofit development partners, such as the backers of this project, the Mission Housing Development Corporation.  

“As architects, we believe that our buildings can certainly tell stories, and if there’s a way that we can translate the community’s stories through our building, then that’s the plan,” said Garcia. 

Designed in coordination with the nonprofit developer and representatives of the cultural district, the layout and facade reflect the storytelling tradition of indigenous communities. In one meaningful touch, window guards around the building’s exterior feature the shapes of various sacred native animals, including a coyote, a hummingbird, and a salmon, meant to “spark curiosity and memories,” said Garcia. 

The benefits of collaboration

La Maravilla underscores the benefits of collaborating with nonprofit partners on affordable housing projects. As the constellation of nonprofits involved in affordable housing expands, and as existing nonprofits expand their reach and ambition, they provide architects with more opportunities to work on projects with unique amenities, features, and community-led visions. 

“Nonprofits are much more into community-building and staying with the communities they serve,” said Alex Brito, AIA, principal at RKTB Architects. “It's a different feeling, a different way of looking at things, versus if you’re only concerned with profit.”

Nonprofits have long played myriad roles in the affordable housing sector, but many are steadily increasing their interest and investment in affordable housing, providing new sources of not just funding but expertise and community support. Larger institutions, from the charitable arms of Big Tech firms to local school districts and healthcare networks, have started funding housing in earnest. 

Major investments

In San Diego, a team of nonprofits, including the Prebys Foundation and Jewish Family Service of San Diego, spent $12 million to secure land in the Chollas neighborhood, significantly lowering the development cost of the forthcoming 249-unit Thyme project. Thyme will feature a wood-slatted tropical modernism design from AO Architects. Sarah Kruer Jager, a partner at the developer, Monarch Group, said this investment in housing not only reduces the financial pressures on design and construction, opening up more opportunities for architectural creativity, but serves these institutions’ wider missions.

“These organizations are dealing with the consequences of housing instability every day,” per Jager. “Instead of continually treating the consequences, we're investing upstream in one of the root causes.”

The Healthcare Anchor Network tracked roughly $600 million of affordable housing investment by hospitals and healthcare systems last year, according to president and CEO David Zuckerman, often dedicated to pairing housing developments with supportive care services. Healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente has made housing a priority with its $400 million Thriving Communities Fund. Schools across the nation have begun partnering with developers to turn excess land into accessible workforce housing; in California alone, nearly 200 districts are planning or considering such projects. 

Unlocking new design outcomes

Many of the community-focused features and design elements embedded in these projects aren’t new to architects, said Alex Choy, head of Chicago-based healthcare system CommonSpirit Health’s community investing program, which includes a large affordable housing portfolio. But supportive nonprofits have become much more attuned to more contemporary approaches, including trauma-informed design and aging in place.

Like other healthcare institutions, Boston’s Children’s Hospital is now a sizable supporter of affordable housing. The organization has found that by utilizing its community reinvestment portfolio to provide lower-cost loans, it can support more deeply affordable units and push developers and designers to focus on larger, family-oriented units, said Shari Nethersole, the institution’s vice president of community health.

Nonprofit support can trickle down into a number of different design outcomes. Often, supporting groups seek ground-floor office and retail space that can house the offices of other organizations or support services. The Community Vision Capital loan fund, which focuses its work in California, recently published a report analyzing its efforts to place nonprofits on the ground floor of affordable housing projects. Adding such organizations–and incorporating ground-floor design elements such as special facilities and column-free spaces–can not only add stable tenants and improve the financing of a project but enliven the surrounding area and benefit residents, said Saul Ettlin, a real estate consultant.

“These tenants can help put together a great story for both government and public funding and private philanthropy,” according to Ettlin. 

Take the Casa Adelante project at 2060 Folsom in San Francisco, designed by Mithun and Y.A. studio with the aim of creating a community square, with commercial space spilling out to a porch overlooking the adjacent park. The ground-floor layout features space suited for a variety of non-profits, including PODER, a Latino immigrant advocacy group; First Exposures, a youth-focused photography nonprofit fitted with a darkroom; and Youth Speaks, an art and poetry group that benefitted from a new performance space. 

Other developments boast similar community-oriented tenants and spaces, supported in part by the nonprofit’s community focus. At the 1064 Mission Street supportive housing project, also by Herman Coliver Locus Architecture, a ground-level culinary training school helps provide job training and support for the recently unhoused. Named CHEFS (Conquering Homelessness through Employment in Food Services), it is run by the Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco. 1064 Mission Street offers a unique kind of pedestrian activation on the sidewalk, said Gracia, as passersby watch students practice cooking throughout the day. 

Garcia also pointed to another ongoing San Francisco development, this one a senior housing project in Chinatown with Mission Housing on 758 Pacific Avenue. The city’s iconic Chinatown neighborhood has been changing and evolving, with many longtime community institutions under increasing financial strain. To help counter this shift, this development incorporates a ballroom and banquet hall, a staple of local neighborhood social life that has slowly disappeared, with only one such community center still standing. 

“They're very aware that bringing affordable housing into a community is not always going to be welcomed, and this may be a little way that they kind of put little icing on the cake,” she said. “We’re not just bringing housing and more neighbors. We’re bringing amenities that serve the greater community.” 

Drawing in funding

Incorporating these different design philosophies–focusing on specific communities while including space for anchor institutions–also helps projects draw in more sources of government and philanthropic funding. In Scarborough, Maine, the 51-unit Sturgeon Place apartment development, designed by Boston-based firm The Architectural Team, is working with a disability-focused nonprofit, 3i Housing of Maine, to create a 100% accessible building at the site of a former race track. It will feature assistive features such as adaptive environmental controls, a designated workspace for service providers, and a mobility and assistive technology hub. 

Principal Gary Kane, AIA, said it has been enlightening working with a group so committed to universal design principles and encouraging to see how a project like this can help attract more funding sources. “You’re trying to give state agencies a reason to fund the project,” said Kane. “There’s really an unending supply of projects out there, and states are always looking to diversify.”

Affordable housing, in all its diversity, gives nonprofits an opportunity to pursue and promote their specific causes while making an impact on the nation’s housing crisis. As more nonprofits devote more effort and funding to these projects, it adds more opportunities for architects to get involved in community-oriented projects. 

“We see once organizations make their first investments, they continue,” said HAN’s Zuckerman. “They just refine their process.”

Patrick Sisson is a freelance writer covering the AEC industry. He lives in Los Angeles.