Los Angeles may be home to Million Dollar Listing, but it’s also home to one of the country’s largest homeless populations. A new generation of affordable housing is making a difference.
On an average day at the corner of Hollywood and Western, you might see an actor day-jobbing as Superman, a Midwestern tourist, and a local panhandler saunter across the street to the subway station. Meanwhile, car horns blare at the intersection while a sweaty police officer directs traffic amidst a swirling mist of exhaust fumes.
So when architect Stephen H. Kanner was brought in to evaluate affordable housing options for one of Hollywood’s liveliest corners, he found that the developer’s plans for a Bavarian-style apartment complex didn’t exactly fit with the area’s streetwise character.
“It wouldn’t be appropriate to build a sort of Hansel and Gretel thing with gabled roofs and clapboard siding,” says Kanner, whose Santa Monica–based firm is known for its modern designs. “This is a major urban corner of L.A. with a subway station.”
Kanner saw an opportunity, and in no time he’d proposed a boxy, modern complex covered in red, blue, yellow, and orange plaster panels to mirror the checkerboard décor of the subway below. To his surprise, the affordable housing powers that be approved, and Metro Hollywood Transit Village was born.
Welcome to the next generation of affordable housing: smart and efficient designs that encourage healthy communities. Metro Hollywood’s roof can accommodate solar photovoltaic panels and each unit has an open floor plan conducive to natural light. A common courtyard is shared with an older affordable housing building behind it, bringing together toddlers and grandpas; jewelry-store clerks and social workers; and Russian, Armenian, and English speakers in one vibrant community. On the retail level, a bank, clothing store, and soon-to-come child-care center and bicycle shop will bring in the outside world. “It’s big, but it’s visually broken down in a way that’s respectful to the street,” Kanner says.
Generally speaking, housing that’s considered “affordable” will have rental or mortgage costs of no more than 30 percent of the resident’s income. Most affordable housing in Los Angeles County is aimed at households making less than $33,000 a year—or roughly 60 percent of the area’s median family income—and is subsidized by a variety of public and private sources.
As median home prices in many markets stay stuck in the stratosphere, affordable housing advocates realize two things: Their time is now, and they must avoid the fate of the crumbling, spiritless housing projects of decades past. Critical to that goal is creating a living space people are proud to call home, rather than one they simply tolerate for its cheap rent. Hanging overhead is the specter of projects such as Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green, an ultra-high-density public housing complex that was eventually partially razed. Cabrini-Green was doomed by bad management and “modern design applied in a nonhumanistic way,” says Ali Barar, architectural director of Los Angeles Community Design Center, a nonprofit that deals with all stages of affordable housing development.
Today’s affordable housing designs are still fairly dense, but successful developments encourage residents to interact without making it appear forced. “You have to allow life to happen, and you can still do this at 50 units per acre if you pay attention to how you plan it,” Barar says. Open stairways, well-placed community areas, and sustainable energy elements that foster communities are common building blocks. Offering a set of social values that inhabitants can invest in—along with equally vigorous private spaces—encourages success.
“Affordable housing has to be excellent housing,” Barar says. What’s more, he continues, “it has to be an asset to the outside community; otherwise NIMBY-ism can become a big obstacle.”
Forward-thinkers are also realizing that modern design can equal cost savings if done right. “As an architect I push modern design because you can do it less expensively,” Barar says. “You can do nice things with stucco and studs and corrugated steel. Simple forms done in a subtractive, deductive way instead of, say, adding porches and trellises.”
Nowhere is the concept of smart affordable housing more critical than Los Angeles, which boasts the dual distinction of having some of the highest median home prices as well as more homeless and low-income people than any other county in the country. Here, a handful of modern architects use Los Angeles as a laboratory to show how they cultivate community pride while pounding out affordability in tight spaces.
