This story is part of our annual look at the state of American design. This year, we’re highlighting work that shines through an acrimonious moment—and makes the case for optimism.

This summer, while most Americans were focused on the big-picture politics of the election, a small but consequential political event transpired in Washington. On the Senate floor, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act—which had passed the House of Representatives with an overwhelming bipartisan majority—was blocked during an August 1 procedural vote. As reported by Politico, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, blamed the failure on “Senate Republicans [who] decided they’d rather wait around and hope Trump wins” than take action now.

The bill’s death, like so many others’, was a quiet one, barely noted in the media. But its repercussions may be very audible. Across the nation, cities and counties struggle to build adequate housing for working people. The now-defunct tax bill contained provisions that would have supercharged the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC), the federal subsidy that since 1986 has constituted the primary mechanism for privately built, low-cost development in America. The success of that program—always a contentious one and limited in impact—now hangs in the balance, along with a path forward for the housing movement.

In the meantime, designers and builders are intent on showing how much can be done with the means now available and what might be possible with more and better tools in the future. Architects are expanding the visual language of LIHTC-sponsored housing. Case in point: the Atrium at Sumner, a new 190-unit senior and supportive project in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. “These building typologies are often very limited,” says architect Daniel Libeskind. “But you can turn them around.” Renowned for his Jewish Museum in Berlin and the master plan for Manhattan’s rebuilt World Trade Center, Libeskind is a relative newcomer to the affordability field, having only recently completed his first such project, on Long Island. The LIHTC development process—which requires builders to meet special benchmarks to qualify for partial reimbursement at tax time—was daunting, though the team at Studio Libeskind viewed it as an opportunity to do more with less. “You can work within the budget and all the limitations and still produce something that has dignity,” says the architect.

Atrium manages to do just that, breaking the mold for affordable housing in more ways than one. While 50 percent of its $132 million budget was covered through the federal LIHTC reimbursement, the team behind the project was able to realize huge upfront savings by building on the vacant green space surrounding an existing public housing project, the 1958 Sumner Houses. Usually stymied by bureaucratic and political considerations, this economical maneuver has the added advantage of highlighting just how much Studio Libeskind’s design solution differs from the outdated 20th-century housing type next door: In contrast with the blocky brick towers of Sumner, Atrium is a sharp, irregularly shaped meteorite of a building, with exterior planes that jut and recede at odd angles. Even more striking is its eponymous central feature, a mezzanine courtyard that allows the building’s interior to “glow with radiance and joy,” as Libeskind describes it, marking a more definitive break with the low-cost housing of yesteryear.

In a very different city and context, another design firm has been able to make the most of the awkward tax-incentive system. Boston’s Brighton neighborhood is unusual in multiple respects: Only a stone’s throw from rapidly gentrifying Allston, the quaint trolley-car suburb is home to an economically and culturally diverse community, including a high percentage of lower-income retirees. Catering to them has been the work of nonprofit senior-residence operator 2Life, whose multibuilding compound has just expanded to include a new addition: the 142-unit J. J. Carroll redevelopment, designed with rare sensitivity and attention to detail by Beantown’s own MASS Design Group. “From a design perspective, we wanted to see how we could create density while still fostering community,” says MASS’s Jonathan Evans.

As in Brooklyn, Evans and his colleagues benefited from a happy historical accident: After nearly 60 years, the Boston Housing Authority elected to demolish the aging J. J. Carroll Apartments, a collection of three-story structures that just happened to be bordered on two sides by 2Life’s campus. The elder-care specialists were a natural pick for the redevelopment, and the wisdom of their selection was confirmed by MASS’s remarkably subtle design. Comprising five interconnected volumes, the homey yet contemporary mid-rise—the dwelling spaces are clad in colored panels, the public areas in terra-cotta tiles—mediates between the institutional character of 2Life and the fabric of the residential neighborhood. Natural finishes and fixtures, like wooden handrailings and seating niches, as well as large outdoor terraces, make for an unusual balance of domesticity and dynamism, perfect for keeping aging residents active while helping them feel at home. The lobby even features a wall of weathered brick, reclaimed from the old housing project that used to stand on the site. “We wanted to honor that a little bit, to bring that history into the project,” says Evans.

The strictures of LIHTC can easily throw a monkey wrench into the best-laid architectural plans—as Lorcan O’Herlihy, of Los Angeles–based Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA), discovered with Sun King Supportive Housing, the firm’s latest affordable housing development in the Sun Valley section of the San Fernando Valley. The project is hardly LOHA’s first foray into the field, which has become a particular focus for the office’s founder. “As an architect, you have to ask yourself, How can I use my abilities to solve important crises?” says O’Herlihy. “Homelessness is one of those.” With some 75,000 people currently living on the streets of greater L.A., the metropolis has been especially hard hit by homelessness, the crisis compounded by a lack of transitional housing for those trying to get out of the shelter system and into permanent accommodations. That’s where Sun King comes in, offering units at just 30 percent of the area’s median income, one of the lowest tiers available under the current tax-incentive structure.

A bold, bright-red exterior sets the tone for LOHA’s design, a decidedly fresh and forward-looking statement in the context of conventional, suburban Sun Valley. “We wanted to ensure there was light for all the units,” O’Herlihy says, an ambition made real by breaking up the mass with patios and exterior stairwells. But the firm’s original scheme took this in a slightly different direction: At the outset, the shared courtyards would have occupied a larger portion of the footprint; partway through the development process, O’Herlihy and company learned that in order to make the tax-subsidized financing pencil out, the client required that more space be reserved for dwellings. Out went some of the outdoor areas, and in went more living areas—a move the designer doesn’t appear to lament, viewing the change-up as a natural part of working in the low-cost sector and one that left his vision largely intact. “We were able to listen and reformulate the building,” he says.

“You can work within the budget and all the limitations and still produce something that has dignity.”
–Daniel Libeskind, architect

Even under the best of circumstances, the limited number of LIHTC credits available to local housing authorities represents a major challenge. What if builders can’t get any? “All we had was the land subsidy,” says Ruben Caldwell, speaking of the latest workforce-housing project built by his firm, Post Company. Though still maintaining an office in Brooklyn, the designer himself moved to Jackson, Wyoming, in 2016. “People don’t consider you a local unless you’ve lived here for three generations,” he says—yet Caldwell’s design for the 440 W Kelly apartments shows how much the designer has embraced the ethos of the famed mountain resort town and how serious he is about addressing its most pressing problem. In the last four years alone, the median cost for a home in Jackson has nearly doubled; it now stands at a staggering $2.4 million, well beyond the reach of essential workers like nurses and firefighters.

On a site near the Teton County Fairgrounds, 440 is a 12-unit complex aimed at exactly the kind of people the community’s skyrocketing housing costs have been driving away. The Jackson/Teton County Affordable Housing department acquired the parcel in 2019 at a cost of $1.7 million; with a group of nearby residents staunchly opposed to the development, the team had to trim four units off its initial proposal, which was already ineligible for LIHTC, owing to the structure of the development deal. Yet Post’s design—simple, rustic, infused with an identifiably regional feel, a varied massing, and wooden cladding—seems perfectly attuned to the neighborhood. For the apartments, Caldwell says, he “took the same tactic as with our budget hospitality projects,” choosing white oak floors, high-end fixtures, and wide-open windows. These advantages do come at a price, though: Now capped by a deed covenant with the county, prices at the complex can go as high as $850,000 for a two-bedroom apartment.

If they don’t get the dramatic expansion in credits promised by the now-deferred Senate bill, more municipalities may have to settle for similar compromises, building less of the truly affordable variety of housing and more of the quasi-affordable workforce type. The good news—and certainly a strong argument in favor of expanding the reach of the LIHTC apparatus—is the relative parity in sophistication, livability, and overall design quality between tax-subsidized buildings and their nonsubsidized counterparts. As O’Herlihy observes, in the affordability space, architects must regard themselves as both problem solvers and ombudsmen, their buildings serving as de facto advertisements for low-cost housing itself. “If people see that the best building on the block is supportive housing, that’s good,” he says. “Design can make that difference.”

Top photo by Hufton & Crow, courtesy Studio Libeskind

Correction on 11/15/24: A previous version of this piece misstated Ruben Caldwell’s job title.

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