Community Building

Housing NOW Addresses the Need for Affordable, Year-round Housing

BY BILL O’NEILL

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BUILD A HOME ON CAPE COD THAT’S ATTRACTIVE, ADAPTABLE AND AFFORDABLE?

The members of the Housing NOW partnership think so. The team members came up with designs for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and one- and two-bedroom cottages that check off those boxes and more.

“We wanted to come up with the next generation Cape Cod style home for first-time home buyers,” said Michael Galasso, an affordable-housing developer with more than 25 years of experience in Massachusetts and California.

The header on the main page of the Housing NOW website says the dwellings are “not your traditional Cape.”

“The idea is they are relatable to Cape Cod architecture, but that they are a fresh, bright, energy-efficient interpretation of it,” said Jill Neubauer, AIA, principal of Jill Neubauer Architects, a Falmouth-based residential architectural firm established in 1994.

The Housing NOW partnership began in 2017 when Cape Cod Young Professionals sponsored a contest inviting local architects and designers to create affordable and attractive housing designs for year-round residents. The plans were required to be “in keeping with the unique village character of our region and, most importantly, attainable in price for young professionals and families living on the Cape.”

Galasso asked Neubauer and Christian Valle of the Valle Group, a Falmouth-based construction company, to collaborate on a submission. “Knowing how great Jill’s talents are in designing modern-looking, upper-end homes, I thought we could take that talent and put it to work on building some great, affordable single-family homes,” said Galasso.

Neubauer found inspiration in the Sears Modern Homes, kit homes sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. in the early 1900s.

“I thought, what if we designed buildings that were kits and you could literally go online, pick your colors and pick some features,” she said. “Then you could buy a one-bedroom dwelling unit and then if you needed and if you had more money in a few years, you could buy a mudroom and have it delivered or a home office or a handicapped-accessible elder unit, and you could buy all these pieces. Then we designed versions for two- and three-bedroom houses.”

The cottages include full kitchens, large windows and cathedral ceilings.

“What Housing NOW is all about, is using material that’s inexpensive in creative ways – make it look great and not make it look cheap,” said Galasso. The dwellings are designed to be affordable for households earning between 80 and 120 percent of the Barnstable County median income.

While the Housing NOW team didn’t win the CCYP contest, they added to their team and continued to refine their design. To create the cost reductions made possible by building multiple units at once, they also designed plans for a community of Housing NOW homes.

“In developing a village that has multiple units, we can include additional features like play space for children and a community garden,” said Stefan Angelovski, a project manager with Jill Neubauer Architects. The design for a 30-unit complex maximizes affordability, he said. “We are part of this journey to solve global and national problems on a local level, in a local context,” he added.

Neubauer’s designs for Housing NOW homes are driven by the principle known as aesthetic justice.

“It ends with the buildings becoming thrilling and joyful and human, not just for the people who get to live in them, but for all the people who drive by them,” she said. “They contribute to the 50- to 100-year built environment of the Cape landscape. I think Cape Cod Young Professionals were visionary when they said design matters, so let’s inspire our design community.”

Neubauer said America has been slow to understand the value of good design, especially for affordable-home developments.

“So many of these projects are not looked upon favorably by neighbors or the community, and I think that they’re right because the precedents they have seen are poorly designed buildings, poorly constructed, and who wants that in their

Housing NOW Partnership

15 Depot Street, Falmouth info@housingnowpartnership.org housingnowpartnership.org

The Housing NOW Team

• Jill Neubauer Architects

• The Valle Group (construction company)

• Sustainable Energy Analytics

• Bernice Wahler Landscapes

• Carol McLeod Design

• Michael Galasso (affordable-housing developer) neighborhood? I don’t want it in my neighborhood because it diminishes my spirit when I drive by it. Even people who aren’t in the building industry or the design world, they know what a crummy building is. They may not be able to tell you why they don’t want it, but they know they don’t want it, and they’re right.

“We have a large mixed-use building right on Main Street in Falmouth and it’s so well designed that I drive by and go, ‘oh, thank you.’ My whole face relaxes, my energy relaxes. If something is designed well, density is not an issue.”

Galasso agrees.

“I’ve always felt that building affordable housing with a high degree of design quality is more important than anything else because you don’t want people to go by and point and say, oh, that’s the affordable housing project over there,” he said. “We’re trying to get the message across about how important aesthetics is for any type of housing, but it’s even more important for affordable housing.”

A graduate of Lawrence High School (as Falmouth High School was then known), Galasso studied architecture at Boston College and went on to work for noted architect Robert A.M. Stern.

“What I learned from working with him is that you want to drive your kid by a project that you’ve built five or 10 years later, and you want to be proud of it,” he said.

The Housing NOW team is trying to find locations for their first homes. “It’s great to have them on paper, but we need to get them built,” said Galasso. “We’re trying to find a way that we can keep our youth in our community, give people who work here, and that we need to have work here, an opportunity to own their own home.

“Hopefully more people will catch on and see what we all need to do collectively. It’s not just going to be Jill and I and Christian who will solve this problem. We really need to all come together to find solutions.” www.beachhouseshake.com

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