ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing Announces Award Winners

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has named one development and two programs as winners of the annual ULI Housing Awards. Winners of the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and the Robert C. Larson Workforce Housing Policy Award, selected by a jury of renowned housing experts, were honored Wednesday at ULI’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Charlesview Residences and Town Homes at Brighton Mills in Brighton, Massachusetts, was selected as the recipient of the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award, which honors developments that ensure housing affordability for people with a range of incomes.

In addition, both the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) Small Multifamily Rental Development Strategy and the Palm Beach County, Florida, Workforce Housing Program (WHP) were selected as recipients of the Robert C. Larson Workforce Housing Policy Award, an annual program that recognizes exemplary state and local programs, policies, and practices that support the production, rehabilitation, or preservation of affordable and workforce housing.

“This year’s ULI Housing Award winners provide powerful examples of the progress our country can and must make at meeting the worst crisis in affordable and workforce housing it has ever experienced,” said Ron Terwilliger, chairman emeritus of Trammell Crow Residential.

Charlesview Residences and Town Homes, home to 260 Boston families of all incomes, is a 28-building, five-city-block development. The project includes 25,000 square feet (2,300 sq m) of vibrant commercial and community space, along with rental apartments and for-sale townhouses for middle-income households. It was built on the site of a vacant shopping center, replacing the structurally deficient Charlesview Apartments.

Charlesview Residences used an innovative approach to the preservation of an affordable housing resource by transferring the Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) subsidy, capitalizing on the value of the original land through a pioneering land swap with Harvard University, and relocating residents to the newly developed site only a half mile (0.8 km) away. In addition, Charlesview Residences expanded the former development with additional workforce, market-rate, and homeownership units; retail space; a vibrant community center; and a new park and public infrastructure.

“One of the most impressive elements of this project was the developer’s partnership with a major university, which is the type of approach that would work in many other communities,” said juror Linda Mandolini, president of Eden Housing, cowinner of a 2014 Kemp Award.

The CHFA Small Multifamily Rental Development Strategy is designed to help meet the needs of small multifamily developments in Connecticut, which make up a substantial share of the affordable housing stock but often struggle from lack of access to technical expertise and financial resources.

A CHFA assessment of the market found that nearly 10 percent of housing units in Connecticut are in structures with five to 19 units. CHFA’s strategy centers on a partnership with the state’s Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs), which provide the knowledge and capacity to serve smaller properties and their owners with both financing and technical assistance. Since the formation of the partnership, the CDFIs have financed over 2,200 units of affordable and mixed-income housing in Connecticut.

Palm Beach County’s WHP is an inclusionary zoning program created to help counter the effects of the county’s dramatic rise in median housing prices between 1995 and 2005. The WHP, which was developed through a task force made up of representatives from the building, economic development, and advocacy communities, calls for a percentage of units in certain new residential developments to be affordable to households earning 60 to 140 percent of the area median income. These households earn too much to qualify for typical housing assistance programs but still struggle to afford the high cost of housing in the area. A total of 36 development approvals with an associated affordable component have been completed since the program was initiated.

“Palm Beach County’s program had staying power, even in the downturn of the past several years, which is one important mark of a successful policy,” said juror Paul Freitag, executive director, West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing.

ULI established the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award in 2008, naming it in memory of Jack Kemp, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and ULI Terwilliger Center national advisory board member. The award is given annually to affordable and workforce housing developments that represent outstanding achievements in several areas, including affordability, innovative financing and building technologies, proximity to employment centers and transportation hubs, quality of design, involvement of public/private partnerships, and replicability of the development, among other criteria.

The Larson Award program was created in 2011 to honor the legacy of the late Robert C. Larson, former ULI Foundation chairman and longtime ULI trustee. The program recognizes states and localities that undertake a broad range of policy and administrative initiatives to support housing affordability. This can take the form of regulatory or administrative changes such as higher densities and waivers of fees, or programs that provide grants or financing assistance. Policy programs are judged on a number of factors, including impact on the supply of workforce housing, comprehensiveness of the tools and programs employed, involvement of public/private partnerships, and the ability to leverage private and nonprofit funds, among other criteria.