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Affordable Housing

"Both as an architect and as a civic leader, I have long been an advocate for affordable and well-designed neighborhoods and for the housing that comprises them. Since my days as an undergraduate student in Environmental Design, I have looked for opportunities to provide design solutions to improve how people live, work and play, always with an eye to cost containment both during the initial construction and for the years to follow. We look for ways to create buildings that are affordable not only to build but to operate and maintain.

The first five years of my architectural career where spent working in the coal-field communities of rural Eastern Kentucky. Even during those early years, I helped to develop innovative housing designs with the non-profit, Family Homes Cooperative for component, factory manufactured affordable housing. These very small super-insulated yet well-ventilated homes required only minimal heat provided by small wood or coal burning stoves. They were designed as a kit of parts to be made in Beckley, West Virginia and then trucked to sites throughout the Appalachian Region.

After moving to Asheville, I was fortunate to work on several major renovation projects with the Asheville Housing Authority. Working at Hillcrest and Pisgah View Apartments we were able to create homes that reflected a less institutional image and which provided safer and more functional homes with amenities such as front porches, rear patios and outside storage. Though we could not alter the barrack configuration of the building layouts to create the types of clustered neo-traditional neighborhoods that better reflect and nurture community, we did work closely with the residents to find the best aesthetic and functional solutions to improve the place where they lived and raised their families.

Involved in AIA Asheville’s exhibit of affordable housing designs in the late 1980’s, I later developed one of my designs for an extremely narrow site into reality for NHS. This home was built on Magnolia and was later adapted and expanded slightly for construction on an additional lot in Montford. Though not selected to provide construction documents, we explored initial design options for NHS in the 90’s for infill housing development on their Montford Avenue and Pearson Drive lots.

Most recently, we have been working with Mountain Housing Opportunities and their various partners including the WNC Green Building Council, the NC State Solar Center and Handmade in America to develop their benchmark sustainable design development, Prospect Terrace, in the West End Clingman Avenue neighborhood. Comprised of both market rate and affordable housing, this development is the pilot project in the state of NC Solar Center’s Healthy Built Homes initiative which promotes sustainability in all aspects of affordable design. With a total of seventeen units, this infill project will be a mix of single-family, duplexes and condominiums, with each home meeting or exceeding Energy Star criteria. These homes are built with durable, sustainable materials and innovative framing and energy saving design to minimize first cost as well as future operational costs, helping to guarantee continued affordability for homeowners. This has been truly a collaborative endeavor between many parties interested in thinking out of the box in terms of what affordable housing can be for Asheville.

Almost all of the affordable design that we have worked on over the years has included the seven principles of universal design so as to meet the needs for the broadest range of persons possible. Even in the private housing market, we spend a great deal of effort working with clients to design new homes or renovate older homes so as to allow them to live there fully and with dignity at all stages of their lives and to accommodate any future needs for accessibility due to age or infirmity. We have also been given many design opportunities to design and adapt facilities, both public and private, to provide accessibility and access to a broader range of people. The work of the late Ron Mace at NC State’s Center for Universal Design is the benchmark and standard upon which Universal Design is currently defined. These are fundamentally sound principles upon which all good design should be based. Beginning with the concept of universal design is a wise investment to guarantee housing that can meet the broadest needs of the community.