Located in the urban core of Salt Lake City, The Aster offers 190 mixed-income units, from studios to four-bedroom apartments, for both market-rate renters and those earning 20 percent to 80 percent of AMI. The two mixed-use buildings include commercial space and use an innovative steel structural system to reduce construction costs.
(Kyle Aiken)
The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced two winners for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and three winners for the Center’s Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing.
“ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing is excited to present the 2025 winners of the Kemp and Innovation awards,” said Aimee Witteman, Chief Impact Officer at ULI. “Each winner is showing the industry how to create more inclusive and affordable communities through housing production.”
The Kemp Award was established in 2008 in memory of Jack Kemp, a former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a national advisory board member of the Terwilliger Center. It recognizes developments that use innovative financing sources to provide attainable mixed-income housing, primarily focusing on households earning between 60 percent and 120 percent of the area median income (AMI).
The Terwilliger Center created the Award for Innovation in 2022 to recognize unique yet replicable developments that offer or preserve deeper affordability.
This year’s winners for the Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing award are:
- The Wilder, Nashville, Tennessee — The Wilder transforms an underutilized motel into 97 units of permanent, mixed-income workforce housing in the urban core of Nashville. By reusing an existing motel building, the project delivers workforce housing faster and more cost-effectively than a typical ground-up apartment development. Those savings, combined with a creative financing and investment strategy, allow the project to serve households earning 60 percent to 100 percent of AMI without relying on public subsidies.
- Market Street Village, San Diego, California — Market Street Village, a 229-unit property in downtown San Diego, exemplifies an innovative strategy for converting market-rate properties to affordable housing through a social impact equity fund that bypasses the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) process. The property designates half of its units for veterans exiting homelessness and the other half for individuals earning up to 80 percent of AMI. An on-site tenant wellness coordinator supplements services provided by Department of Veterans Affairs case managers to help tenants stay housed and build long-term stability.
This year’s winners for the Terwilliger Center Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing are:
- Sendero Verde, East Harlem, New York: Sendero Verde serves more than 700 families with incomes ranging from formerly homeless to 110 percent of AMI, and is now the world’s largest Passive House residential building. Conceived as a “community of opportunity,” it combines high-efficiency, healthy housing with access to quality schools, health care, transit, jobs, and open space. The site includes a Family Enrichment Center and hosts organizations such as Harlem Children’s Zone and Union Settlement. A grant-funded program delivers robust case management and social services for formerly homeless residents.
- The Aster, Salt Lake City, Utah: Located in the urban core of Salt Lake City, The Aster offers 190 mixed-income units, from studios to four-bedroom apartments, for both market-rate renters and those earning 20 percent to 80 percent of AMI. The two mixed-use buildings include 19,000 square feet (1,765.2 sq m) of commercial space and use an innovative steel structural system to reduce construction costs. A paseo plaza between the buildings provides a welcoming public space lined with restaurants, a food hall, event space, offices, and live-work units.
- The Kelsey Ayer Station, San Jose, California: The Kelsey Ayer Station includes 115 apartments for residents earning 20 percent to 80 percent of AMI, with 25 percent of units reserved for people with disabilities. Designed for cross-disability access and inclusive community living, the $75 million development features amenities such as a sensory garden, craft space, fitness room, dog run, and wellness terrace. On-site Inclusion Concierge staff offer personalized support, resource referrals, and relationship-building among residents.
Across the award winners, public policy played a decisive role in enabling ambitious, high-impact housing developments. Together, these examples show how layered local, state, federal, and mission-driven policies can accelerate timelines, reduce costs, and embed long-term affordability, while also advancing equity, sustainability, and inclusion in housing.
- In New York, Sendero Verde leveraged the SustaiNYC RFP, deep affordability requirements, and state energy incentives to deliver the world’s largest Passive House project with long-term affordability commitments.
- In San Diego, Market Street Village combined California’s Welfare Property Tax Exemption, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness’ coordinated entry system, and mission-aligned debt platforms to transform a Class A acquisition into a rapid-response homelessness intervention.
- In Nashville, The Wilder was made possible through Metro Nashville’s Mixed-Income PILOT tax abatement, expedited permitting, and third-party plan review policies, which collectively unlocked an unconventional motel-to-housing adaptive reuse.
- In San José, The Kelsey Ayer Station relied on a layered stack of local funding with 55-year affordability covenants, California’s SB35 streamlined approvals, the state’s Transit-Oriented Development and Mixed-Income programs, and federal HUD Section 811 rental assistance to pioneer inclusive, disability-forward housing.
- Finally, in Salt Lake City, The Aster depended on the city’s redevelopment agency RFQ, federal LIHTC reforms (including the 4 percent “fix”), Utah’s new state housing tax credit, and gap financing tools like the Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund to transform a stalled downtown site into a mixed-use, mixed-income community.
“While each community faces unique economic and real estate circumstances, the affordability demand is universal. I am pleased to see how developers have been able to provide high-quality homes for moderate- and lower-income households. We hope the real estate community can learn from these winners,” said Ron Terwilliger, awards jury chair and founder of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing.”
