ENVISIONING A NEW SOCIAL HOUSING MODEL FOR NYC

Building on lessons learned from the existing conditions research, the studio developed six main components of the CAHRE Model: housing type and financing, participatory planning, design considerations, community services, ground floor commercial, and operations and maintenance. Each part of the model formed a framework that could be feasible in neighborhoods across New York City.

Social housing is a model that ensures permanent affordability, social equality, and democratic resident control by shielding housing from market pressures.5 This studio proposes that the CAHRE Model be implemented as a social housing program to avoid the competitive and unsustainable Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, which does not allow for permanent affordability.6

In a Social Housing program, land acquisition and construction would be subsidized by the city’s floating bonds, investing directly in the project.7 Buildings would be owned by the City and managed by either HCDC or 1199SEIU, allowing for greater flexibility in area median income (AMI) thresholds and permanent affordability. Opening the housing to all essential workers would allow professionals from various AMI thresholds to subsidize operations and maintenance costs.

A land bank could provide land at a low cost to the city, requiring less upfront investment. The NYC Comptroller Brad Lander is advocating for a citywide land bank and a CAHRE project could serve as a pilot development on a land bank lot.8 In the long term, the land could be transferred to the community through a Community Land Trust, perhaps in partnership with the existing Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewards CLT.9

Neighborhood-Specific AMI

Creating neighborhood-level AMI can create truly affordable housing that would make CAHRE successful. Currently, HUD calculates the median income for every metro region. In 2019, the 100 percent AMI level for the New York City region, which includes Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester Counties, was $106,700 for a family of four,10 but carve-outs for Westchester and Rockland Counties11 have allowed for developers to build affordable buildings at higher thresholds to cover operating costs. While a citywide AMI may not help, a Highbridge-or Bronx-specific AMI carve-out would reduce income eligibility for affordable housing permitting more rental units with deeper affordability and providing homes for home care workers.

Essential Workers

Low AMI Essential Workers

Home Care Workers

CAHRE as a Community Facility

Home care workers are critical to care infrastructure. If CAHRE housing is labeled as a community facility per the NYC Zoning Resolution, housing for these workers could fall under this definition.12 There are 2 approaches to categorizing CAHRE Housing as a community facility. 1) Leverage the precedent of supportive housing to define CAHRE housing as an institution with sleeping accommodations. 2) Categorize housing for home care workers near senior housing through a zoning amendment. These approaches use the classification of non-profit hospital dwellings as community facilities.13 Ultimately, these approaches require 1199SEIU to act as a housing developer or manager, which has precedent in their development of 1199 Plaza in East Harlem in 1975.14

WorkForSocial Housing

The proposed model combines the concepts of Social Housing and Workforce Housing. The “Workforce” denotation refers to the tenant housing demographic, while “Social Housing” is the Financing Model. This ambitious vision requires regulatory changes and advocacy by 1199SEIU. For protection, 1199SEIU would manage the building and provide union priority to home care workers by categorizing it as a community facility. Integrating a credit system into union benefits could help home care workers with families to pay for their larger rental units, which tend to be more expensive. Using the money generated through the credit system to pay back the construction loan can keep larger units more affordable without increasing rent.

“Social Housing in the U.S.,” Community Service Society of New York, February 18, 2020, https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/social-housing-in-the-us.

6. Stephanie Sosa-Kalter, “Maximizing the Public Value of New York City- Financed Affordable Housing,” Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, October 10, 2019, https://anhd. org/report/maximizing-public-value-new-york-city-financed-affordable-housing.

7. “Vienna’s Unique Social Housing Program,” Office of Policy Development & Research PD&R Edge (HUD USER, 2014), https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314. html.

8. Sarah Holder, “Staking New York City’s Future on Social Housing,” Bloomberg CityLab, January 29, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/a-plan-to-boost-public-housingin-post-covid-nyc.

9. “Community Land Trust,” South Bronx Unite, accessed November 14, 2022, https://www. southbronxunite.org/community-land-trust.

10. “AMI - New York - Hud Effective Date 042419 - Safeguardcredit.org.” AMI - New York - HUD effective date 042419. The SafeGuard Group, April 2019. https://www.safeguardcredit.org/wp-content/ uploads/2020/02/AMI_Safeguard.pdf.

11. Murphy, Jarrett. 2017. “The Secret History of Area Median Income.” Shelterforce. April 25, 2017. https://shelterforce.org/2017/04/25/secret-history-area-median-income/.

12. “NYC Planning Zoning Resolution,” NYC Department of City Planning, 2021, https://zr.planning. nyc.gov/. 13. Ibid.

14. Adam Thalenfeld, “1199 Plaza,” NYC URBANISM (NYC URBANISM, April 30, 2018), https:// www.nycurbanism.com/brutalnyc/1199plaza.

Designing For Community Care Infrastructure Models For Urban Design

NEW BUILD MODEL: A COMMUNITY HUB

The CAHRE model incorporates a feminist, working-class lens to address the current housing shortage for care workers. This hybrid development model incorporates standard and shared living spaces to be adaptive to care work and provide flexible commercial spaces. To achieve a radical re-imagining of housing for home care workers, some challenges must be overcome, including the lack of vacant lots in a densely populated area, construction costs for building a new development, and existing policy and financing constraints.

From three viable sites across the Highbridge neighborhood that were identified, the site on Ogden Avenue and 167th Street showed the most potential as a community hub. Although some of the neighboring lots are privately owned, HCDC could work with the owners to acquire the lots and offer opportunities to provide community benefits. If all the lots are acquired, a building with over 200 units can be constructed on the site. Due to many homecare workers living in multi-generational households, the studio recommended that units built be two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments with balconies and flexible layouts. The studio also included a small portion of efficient micro-studios that would open up to communal spaces for shared amenities to attract younger individuals to the field, provide a low-cost efficient living, and serve as entry housing for recent immigrants.

The site’s commercial zoning permits ground-floor retail or additional community space that could add to the area’s vital facilities and amenities, such as a daycare center and grocery stores, that can integrate with potential new open space to provide more community benefits. Lastly, the studio recommended using massive timber and passive housing design to drive down construction costs, reduce carbon emissions associated with new construction, and save on heating and cooling costs.

Developable square footage per lot

Developability including grade, terrain, and vacancy of lot

Commercial overlay zoning

Ease of lot acquisition

Proximity to transit

Access to parks and open space

Low environmental hazard

Proximity to grocery stores

Proximity to schools and daycare

Promixity to senior facilities

Adaptive Reuse Model

The adaptive reuse approach to the CAHRE model is a form of redevelopment that focuses on renovating, upgrading, and retrofitting existing residential buildings, and considers adaptive reuse to repurpose commercial or community buildings. By utilizing this approach, developers can reduce their environmental impact, preserve the heritage and identity of the neighborhood, and save money on costs associated with demolition, construction, and new materials.

Retrofitting a building can also lead to healthier and more sustainable living environments. Investments, such as high-performance building envelopes and thermostat controls, can reduce energy costs to make for warmer winters and cooler summers. Meanwhile, electrification of cooking, heat, and hot water systems eliminates the harmful air pollutants that many routinely breathe in homes.15 Solar energy and battery storage reduce energy costs and make electricity resilient to grid-wide outages.

The studio focused on two of three potential sites, 987-989 Ogden Avenue and 368 E 148th Street. Notwithstanding both sites’ individual limitations, the sites were chosen due to their close proximity to existing community facilities, open green space, and transit. To meet the needs of home care workers using two-bedroom layouts of 1,100 square feet and three-bedroom layouts of 1,400 square feet between, the studio determined between 13 and 17 apartments can be built at 987-989 Ogden Avenue, and between 11 to 14 apartments can be built at 368 E 148th Street. Furthermore, using the ground floor for commercial purposes could produce additional monthly revenue to help maintain ownership of the building or offset home care workers’ rents.

Neighborhood Care Network

The neighborhood care network model fuses the new build and adaptive reuse models to distribute housing units among multiple buildings with newbuild community facilities and create connected, healthy, and resilient communities. Integrating housing for home care workers throughout the neighborhood creates a flexible and replicable network of various housing types, resources, and services to provide individualized tenant support to meet tenant needs in different locations. This model can prioritize filling individual apartment vacancies in existing residential buildings, which will reduce expensive upfront costs.

This model employs a phasing approach that begins with a unit placement program, similar to the new build model, and progresses to building out a brick-and-mortar network of services in vacant and underutilized sites throughout the neighborhood. Existing sites suitable for this network model should contain residential square footage, be near accessible subway stations, and neighbor existing community facilities. These facilities should include services such as childcare, workforce training, and home care resource centers.

The studio spotlighted two potential sites to meet some essential needs identified by home care workers. The first is 1400 Cromwell Avenue, an R8A zoned lot, fit for a resource center on the ground floor and housing units above. The second location, located on the corner of Edward Grant Highway and Plimpton Avenue, could be built for seniors and achieve another goal of the CAHRE model. This lot is situated near other HCDC properties and can include senior-focused amenities.

“CAHRE model imagines a communitybased health and care system for creating healthy, resilient, and caring communities in the future. Providing deeply affordable housing for healthcare workers as part of basic neighborhood infrastructure would address their housing needs, freeing up time and opportunities by living in proximity to their potential clients. It would address health care needs of the rapidly growing senior and disabled population, and the community, especially at times of emergency.”

– Studio Faculty and CCCE Consultants

Conclusion

This studio’s proposals and recommendations would strengthen and expand neighborhood infrastructure by incorporating an undervalued but critical workforce into the healthcare system. Through the development of deeply affordable housing with dignified accommodations and vital amenities, the CAHRE Model allows communities like Highbridge to establish a localized care workforce and cultivate neighborhood-based resilience. The three proposed models are examples of how to implement the CAHRE Model in New York City and beyond to allow home health aides to care for their neighbors, clients, families, and, most importantly, themselves.