HUD SECRETARY ANNOUNCES DESIGN AWARD TO FOUR AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS
Dallas, Boston, New Jersey and Fremont, California cited as national models of affordable housing

WASHINGTON - Four affordable housing developments are recipients of the HUD Secretary's Housing and Community Design Award (www.huduser.org/research/secaward.html) for excellence in residential housing design. The U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in conjunction with the American Institute of Architects, selected Homeless Assistance Center of Dallas, Texas; Project Place - Gatehouse of Boston, Massachusetts; Bridgeton Neighborhood Revitalization of Bridgeton, New Jersey; and Irvington Terrace of Fremont, California.

The awards were presented during the 2009 AIA National Convention and Design Exposition in San Francisco.

HUD Secretary Donovan, himself a trained architect, said, "These housing developments are truly transformational. They go beyond both form and function and are helping to revitalize their surrounding neighborhoods. These winning designs show that affordable housing and good design can go hand in hand."

This year's HUD Secretary's Housing and Community Design Award recipients are:

Community-Informed Design

Homeless Assistance Center of Dallas, Texas - Known as "The Bridge," the Homeless Assistance Center meets the growing concerns of homelessness in Dallas. A safe haven and focus for services for more than 6,000 homeless people, it empowers both the chronic and newly homeless to come off the streets and sustain permanent housing in order to live productively. Since opening in May, the Bridge has been more successful than anticipated. Widely accepted by homeless people, a facility designed for 400 now handles up to 1000 people a day, and more than 500 individuals have received training, counseling, secured employment or permanent housing. Results are tangible and the surrounding neighborhood is revitalizing; crime has reduced by 18 percent. The Bridge proves that shelters should not be isolated, but an integrated part of our community.

Creating Community Connection

Project Place - Gatehouse of Boston, Massachusetts, is a new six-story mixed-use building developed by a non-profit agency that helps men and women experiencing homelessness reestablish themselves in society by offering job training, work experience, education, housing, and support services. The building contains 14 units of affordable SRO apartments on the top two floors, a multi-function space for community use, and a ground floor commercial restaurant space, which subsidizes the rent for the building's SRO units and is a job generator for the neighborhood. This sustainable building, currently pending LEED certification, includes two geothermal wells which provide this on-profit agency with an energy efficient means of heating and cooling the building, thus allowing the agency to help the environment, reduce their operating budget, and preserve more funds for their ongoing programming efforts.

Excellence in Affordable Housing Design

Bridgeton Neighborhood Revitalization of Bridgeton, New Jersey - Located in a small town in southern New Jersey, Bridgeton Neighborhood Revitalization is not the stereotypical HOPE VI grant recipient. HOPE VI grants typically have gone to large cities, addressing huge swaths of distressed public housing through urban revitalization projects. This project represents the maturation of the HOPE VI program, addressing urban neighborhoods more sensitively in a broader variety of city contexts. The revitalization plan evolved from the careful identification of where - and where not - to build. Parcels scatters in the northern quarter of the city were selected, all of them nearly vacant blocks, almost entirely paved over from former industrial uses. These parcels were physical barriers to pedestrian and social connectivity, and presented havens for illicit activity. Conversely, the former public housing site was revitalized by removing the existing buildings and restoring the site as a park, reconnecting the neighborhood to the Cohansey River parks and knitting the two sides of the city back together.

Irvington Terrace of Fremont, California - This 100-unit low-income housing development in Fremont strikes a fine balance between progressive modernist forms and a traditional village-square-like community. It forms a block-long perimeter of flat-roofed rental apartments, articulated with interlocking rectilinear volumes that define individual units. These fused and richly textured units avoid the monumental austerity of past failed experiments in modernist affordable housing by providing street wall relief and variety, complete with street-enlivening stoops and porches. The rows of housing surround two town-square courtyards with adjacent public amenities. The project successfully balances the design aspirations with the risk of cultural dislocation of the residents. As a result, all stakeholders, including both client and residents, can relate to the project design.

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