Generation-skipping housing
From Real Estate Weekly via Knowledgeplex comes another innovation in housing tenure: apartments designed specifically for a new extended-family configuration:
A 6-story building that contains 51 units (41 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom apartments) provides affordable apartments to a growing segment of the population: low-income grandparents who are raising their grandchildren.
“As architects, we are committed to developing creative design solutions for our clients regardless of project type. However, our role as architects becomes even more gratifying when we design socially groundbreaking projects such as the PSS GrandParent Family Apartments,” said Eric Goshow, Founding Partner of Goshow Architects.
At the Grand opening
The property is a mixture of tenure-specific apartment elderly-friendly features:
All of the units have fully equipped kitchens, are handicapped-accessible and equipped with emergency buzzer and intercom systems in the bathrooms and master bedrooms.
Specialized spaces:
In addition to 5,079 s/f of retail space on the first floor, the PSS Grandparent Family Apartments contain a variety of special spaces including:
A community center
Counseling offices
A child care facility
A “smart” resource center and library
Food service facilities
An outdoor recreation area
A roof garden to be planted this spring
No wonder it cost more than $200,000 per apartment!
It’s also housing plus services:
Support services offered to residents include:
Case management
Parenting workshops
Childhood development
Support groups
Day care
After-school education and tutoring.
Warehousing the poor is not enough — indeed, it’s arguably worse than nothing, since it perpetuates a cycle of dependency and poverty. Instead, housing can be a haven for family change, a hand up toward personal and economic self-sufficiency for the next generation. Moreover, why make the people go to the services, when you can bring the services to a critical mass of people? And, in the bargain, monitor their progress?
How can it possibly be affordable?
The GrandParent Family Apartments is unique for its population but also for the creative public-private partnership that made the project possible.
That and the massive government assistance, starting with NYCHA contributing the land. Then add soft debt and soft equity:
The PSS GrandParents project received:
· $1.9 million [soft debt, 18% of TDC — Ed.] from the Low Income Housing Trust Fund program, and
· An allocation of $759,000 from the Federal Low Income Housing Credit program which will produce $6.2 million in private equity [soft equity, 60% of TDC]
It also had a non-profit sponsor, and almost certainly a real estate tax abatement:
The PSS GrandParent Family Apartments is sponsored by Presbyterian Social Services and was developed by West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, Inc.
Note the fusion of health care providers and housing.
The New York City Housing Authority [One of the oldest and best housing authorities — Ed.] will provide rental subsidies for all housing units in order to make them affordable to families with incomes up to 50 percent of the area median income.
Whatever your views on the absent parents (the missing generation), having the old raise the very young is a great symbiosis.
“There are more tenure configurations in urban environments, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
— Hamlet, Act 1, scene v.