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Charleston Magazine
March 2007
Building Lives
By Stephanie Hunt
Although Charleston has a rich history of architectural design and social benevolence, the city still struggles with one fundamental problem: how to create affordable and attractive housing that is part of the fabric of the community.
"What role should design play in providing for basic human needs? Should design be considered a luxury or a necessity?" These are the fundamental questions posed in the fascinating book, Design Like You Give a Damn, published by Architecture for Humanity, which promotes socially conscious architecture. The book presents extraordinarily innovative solutions for emergency housing needs arising from conflict, as in Kosovo, or natural catastrophe, like a tsunami. For an architecturally conscious city like Charleston—where the cost of real estate and housing has risen tsunami-like over the last decade -- the book's basic question hits home. And it hit home very clearly one day for Linda Ketner.
It was the late 1980s, and, as the former chair of Crisis Ministries and the first chairperson of the mayor's new Council on Homelessness (now called the Council on Homelessness and Affordable Housing), Ketner, a philanthropist and social activist, was tackling affordable housing in Charleston. The crisis was that Crisis Ministries, the local homeless shelter, was doing too good a job; shelter guests were finding jobs and putting their lives back together, but they couldn't afford area rents when it came time to move on. In Ketner's view, the need was urgent; there was no time and no money to waste on the finer points of design. "Let's just find decent housing-- who cares what it looks like," she advocated, butting heads with architects such as Christopher Rose, who had designed new transitional housing near the shelter. Then one day, Ketner sat down with a man named Joe.
"Joe had been at the shelter for a year and a half," she recalls. He had gotten sober, found a job, and qualified for one of the new transitional units Rose had designed. Joe invited Ketner over the day he moved in. "I stopped by, and after he gave me a tour, he sat down and started weeping. I said, 'Joe, what's the matter?' and he said, 'I can't believe people care enough about me to give me a beautiful home.' And after that," Ketner adds, "I never again believed that design didn't matter. It has an impact."
Joe's new abode was a well-thought-out efficiency with a front porch—nothing palatial or splashy, just one of the six Charleston Cottages on the corner of Huger and Meeting streets that Rose modeled after traditional freedman's cottages on the upper peninsula. Joe wasn't the only one who thought his home was beautiful. The cottages, built in 1988 for $12,000 each using structured insulated panels and volunteer labor, earned Rose a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), a distinction typically attached to dramatic symphony halls and museums and names like Philippe Stark, Michael Graves, and Frank Gehry. Rose was lauded for his ingenious use of vernacular form and materials, for expanding interior volume with a vaulted ceiling under a simple pitched roof, and for expanding usable space with the porch’s inexpensive square footage. Yet what mattered to Joe was not that his house was featured in Architecture Today and on the front page of USA Today, but that he felt at home there, that he could relax on his porch and revel in a restored sense of dignity.
Building on a Legacy
"This notion that everyone has a right to beauty is more true in Charleston than elsewhere in the country," notes Charles Chase, the former city architect and preservation officer who is now director of the San Francisco Architectural Heritage Alliance and a consultant on the updated Charleston Preservation Plan. "There is far greater attention to aesthetic detail here, especially with regard to how we house and incorporate people from broad economic spectrums in the life and livelihood of the city." In fact, like about everything else in Charleston, this notion is rooted in the city's history. Many coveted South of Broad buildings now commanding top dollar were originally built as tenements in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Robert Mills Manor, one of the country's first public housing projects built under Roosevelt's New Deal, was designed by the famed Albert Simons, who followed a simple articulation of traditional forms using indigenous materials. The longevity of these buildings reflects the pride and care that went into their design and construction.
Yet despite Charleston's precedent of mixed-income neighborhoods with attention to design at all price points, those trying to maintain that legacy face formidable challenges. "It's a huge, bureaucratic mountain to climb to do affordable housing at all, much less to do it well," notes Chase. Negotiating appreciated land values, zoning constrictions, and the demands of design review boards (sometimes multiple ones, as on Daniel Island, where plans must pass the Daniel Island and City of Charleston boards of architectural review) pose significant hurdles for developers. Then there's the long process of putting together funding.
Nonetheless, folks like Tammie Hoy of the Lowcountry Housing Trust (LHT) and Debbie Waid, John Henry, and Tracy Doran of the Humanities Foundation are determined mountain climbers, experts at finding every funding crevice to get leverage for the cause. Fortunately, they don't climb alone. Mayor Riley and his staff, along with private developers such as Matt Sloan of The Daniel Island Company, Vince Graham of the I'On Group, and Tim Keane of Keane & Company, are shaping dynamic visions of what inclusive communities can look like. And local architects such as Rose and Whitney Powers continue to push the creative edge to ensure that "affordable" isn't code for substandard.
Minding the Gap
But what does affordable mean? Tammie Hoy and Debbie Waid know the numbers. Both can rattle off statistics and acronyms of various federal, state, and local agencies faster than you can say "HUD;" they understand the complex minutia of legislative bills, Low-Income Tax Credits, and other funding mechanisms. And they can do the math: $56,400 is the median Charleston-area income for a family of four; $169,000 is the upper-limit affordable house price for that income, according to federal guidelines (HUD recommends spending no more than 30 percent of income for housing, meaning a home purchase price no more than two-and-a-half times one’s annual salary); $270,000 is the median house price in Charleston.
What qualifies as "affordable housing," however, is a little less clear. The term is relative, depending on what one earns and what's available on the local market. On Daniel Island, for example, a $200,000 house could be considered affordable housing, as could a $200-per-month apartment on the peninsula. There are, however, three standard tiers for targeting affordable housing: low-income housing is typically for those earning 30 percent or less than the Area Median Income (AMI); moderate income housing is for those earning 50 to 80 percent of AMI; and middle-income, or workforce housing, is for those earning 80 to 120 percent of AMI.
"There's an alarming gap between what folks earn and what the local housing market provides and is producing," says the energetic, fresh-faced Hoy, who has a personal passion for the issue. "I grew up in public housing in Chicago," she adds. "I've always appreciated the opportunity it gave us. My mother worked two jobs, and before we got into public housing, we lived in substandard housing. I know how hard it is to do homework when the roof leaks and it's cold." Today, Hoy helps to provide that same opportunity to hundreds of others. As executive director of the LHT, Hoy is an educator, lobbyist, and funding magician for affordable housing. Since its inception two years ago, the trust has funneled $1.3 million into regional developments, helping to create 324 units of affordable housing.
Corner of Main & Main
The new Seven Farms Apartment complex on Daniel Island is one of the recent recipients of LHT funds. Located in the heart of the upscale Daniel Island business and residential community, the handsome 75-unit complex is fully leased with a waiting list. Its one-, two-, and three-bedroom, apartments rent from $461 to $632 a month, and the income cap for an individual lessee is $19,700 a year, or 50 percent of the Charleston metro AMI.
Seven Farms, developed by the nonprofit Humanities Foundation, represents the first phase of Daniel Island’s commitment to set aside five percent of its residential units for affordable housing. "We're the only planned community that I'm aware of to do so," says Matt Sloan. “Gaining community acceptance (for the project) was challenging, but having excellent design made it easier. Seven Farms is basically on the corner of "Main and Main," yet the fact that it's affordable housing isn't apparent," Sloan adds.
“Architecturally, it’s on par with anything out here.”
Funding the project wasn't easy either. Debbie Waid had to find at least seven sources to augment equity from the Low-Income Tax Credit program to cover Seven Farms' $8.7 million price tag. "I look for anything and everything," says Waid, referring to government and private funding resources. But what she doesn't look for are ways to skimp on quality. "We build housing that we wouldn't mind living in," Waid affirms. "We care about appearance, because it matters to our tenants and to the community."
New School
Over the years, Whitney Powers of Studio A Architecture, who also serves on the LHT board, has carved out a niche designing affordable housing projects. In her bread-and-butter work creating high-end custom homes on the barrier islands and her commercial and other residential projects, Powers is known for her progressive vision tempered with regional sensibility. And she brings the same forward thinking to affordable design. After Hurricane Hugo, when Charleston Affordable Housing asked Powers to design a scattered site development on Race Street, she obliged with four contemporary duplexes modeled after the classic Charleston single. "It was fun to do," says Powers. "I made them whimsical, yet they fit into the neighborhood."
After the old Cooper River bridges were removed, the city hired Powers to renovate nine affected houses, which were then designated for first-time homebuyers. Her most recent project involved the combined renovation and new design for the long-vacant Immaculate Conception School on Coming Street, now Radcliffe Manor, providing 63 apartments for residents aged 55 and older with incomes no greater than 40 percent of AMI. Powers enhanced the "campus," adding a community building with large inviting windows fronting the street. The result is definitely not old school. As was the case on Daniel Island, neighbors resisted the project, and the endeavor entailed two years of "heart-rending work," admits Powers, whose design won a South Carolina AIA Award. "It's a terrific challenge to work within strict parameters -- you have to seek creative opportunities. You have to make it happen."
Inclusive Communities
The fact that the National Association of Home Builders recently ranked Charleston the nation's 28th least affordable housing market in the nation (relative to median income) doesn't sit well with developer Vince Graham. Granted, his highly successful I'On neighborhood in Mount Pleasant is doing its part to skew the numbers, but, as board chairman of the LHT, Graham has a broader vision for what communities should and could look like. "It's about being inclusive rather than exclusive," he says. "It takes all income levels to make a vibrant community."
On a dense acre of downtown infill, Graham's I'On Group is completing phase one of Morris Square, a mixed-use development of single-family homes, townhomes, commercial space, and parks, with five percent of its 64 units, indistinguishable from its market-rate ones, to be earmarked "affordable." "This is not a new concept," he says, speaking of incorporating diverse uses into a neighborhood. "I believe suburbs are a passing fad, and we're just getting back to business-as-usual, pre-World War II, pre-gated communities. It's possible to plan so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the attention given to parks and streetscapes draws people from the private realm into the public, where the bonds of community are formed." Graham's vision may sound lofty, especially as the NIMBY ("not in my back yard") objections of vocal neighbors on Daniel Island or those near Radcliffe Manor still faintly echo. Even so, those committed to creating well-designed affordable housing are making headway toward more inclusive neighborhoods. When Tracy Doran, president of the Humanities Foundation, passes by Seven Farms Apartments every morning as she drives her kids to school, she thinks to herself, "Wow. I love the way it addresses the corner, all the brick and balconies -- it's as pretty as anything else out there.
"People ask me how we can afford to spend so much on our projects," she says. "It's simple: we can't afford not to. Our projects have to stand up to public scrutiny and the test of time. We want to create buildings that people are proud to live in, that are part of the fabric of the community. They have to be beautiful."