50 Years of Affordable Housing
This interview was originally published by Urban Design Associates. It is shared here with permission.
Ray Gindroz, FAIA. (Source: Urban Design Associates.)
Urban Design Associates (UDA) has been involved in the design of mixed-income neighborhoods for a half-century. The following interview (conducted by Eric Osth, the current chairman of UDA) is with co-founder of UDA, Ray Gindroz, FAIA, who served as chairman and led countless projects on transforming public housing into mixed-income neighborhoods. Gindroz showed significant interest in the policies, governance structure, and physical design years before it was a major issue. Moving forward, affordable housing is a challenge that faces all cities today.
In 2022, the Institute of Classical Architecture + Art (ICAA) proudly announced the inaugural Gindroz Award for Excellence in Affordable Housing. The award was named in honor of the work of Ray Gindroz, FAIA, for his over 50 years of work in affordable and mixed-income housing over his career at UDA.
Eric Osth: When did you first begin to get interested in transforming public housing into neighborhoods?
Ray Gindroz: When David Lewis joined the faculty at Carnegie Tech in the early sixties, I was introduced to several discussions in graduate school that had a significant impact on me and my career. The first would be Alvin Schorr's "Slums and Social Insecurity," which demonstrates how the physical form of the city can either make it easier for people to move up in the world or make it much more difficult. That made me look at projects and neighborhoods with three questions: How does the design of dwellings support a positive self-image for their residents? How does the city's physical form make it easy to use the city? How does the project create a safe environment?
We also participated in community engagement, which was quite new at the time. Students were required to go out into the community, interview people on the street, and participate in regular meetings with the planning committee of local civic leagues. Obviously, David and I went on to form Urban Design Associates in 1964, and this became a cornerstone of the UDA process. At UDA, we participated in several key projects that shaped our approach and the direction for our practice. Interestingly, the first housing projects were done in rural settings without resident input, so we had no way of understanding ideas or the impact of our project. We began our robust community engagement processes for Public Housing in the 1970s.
One of our first projects of this type had some rowhouse building lining two streets and others on green spaces perpendicular to a main road. We talked to people on their front steps as we walked around. We held several public meetings. We learned that the units facing the street with high porches were the most desired, while the units on the greens were disliked. The residents felt safe on the streets because they were visible from the cars and pedestrians going by. On the greens, they felt isolated and easy targets for criminal and anti-social activity. Our designs added streets and a more walkable urban environment, and this approach led to a transformation of a “project” into a true neighborhood.
Osth: When and how did you develop your interest in Mixed-Income housing?
Gindroz: In the early 1990s, we began a collaboration with Richard Baron. As a legal aid lawyer early in his career, Richard helped public housing residents organize resident councils and other ways to solve problems in their projects. After a few years, he realized that this was not enough. To reduce concentrations of poverty, it was essential to attract an economically diverse population. This would be impossible without a fundamental change in the built form of the communities. Richard had begun in St. Louis with a series of developments that mixed public housing units, moderate-income units (workforce housing), and market-rate or for-sale units. The developments were designed as parts of a neighborhood rather than a project, with the units in house-like buildings, lining tree-lined streets. Physical development was combined with intensive efforts to provide supportive social services, health and educational programs, and job training. All of these were remarkably successful and dramatically increased residents’ ability to finish their education, find jobs, and succeed.
Our first collaboration with Richard was a ground-breaking project in Pittsburgh called Crawford Square. Richard Baron commissioned us to design a multi-family, mixed-income development at the lower end of the Hill District at the edge of Downtown Pittsburgh. It includes public housing, workforce housing, and market-rate rentals in a mix of townhouses and small apartment houses with the image of a pair of large, single-family homes. It also included for-sale single-family houses on small lots in a similar architecture. It was so successful that additional areas were re-developed which is bringing about a Renaissance for the Hill District.
One of the key characteristics is that there is no difference between the units for different income levels. In fact, they are mixed within buildings and change as new tenants move in. What began as a public housing unit, often is a market-rate unit for the next family. The combination of public funding, city investment in infrastructure, foundation grants, federal investment, and private investment attracted the interest of Henry Cisneros and ultimately became a model for the HOPE VI program.
Osth: How did you play a part in shaping national policies, specifically the Hope VI program?
Gindroz: Our influence was through the demonstration of strong urban design principles. David Rice, the head of the Norfolk Regional Housing Authority (NRHA), asked UDA to help find the most effective use of an allocation of HUD funding for the renovation of a distressed public housing project called Diggs Town. David did not think the standard use of the funds would do anything to solve the problems of crime, drug gangs, alienation, and poverty. He asked us to redesign the exteriors and the site plan to create a more neighborhood-like community. In the intense resident involvement process, residents said, "We would like to have porches so we can see each other, be together so we can come together to solve our community's problems.”
We learned that residents needed places to park their cars within sight of their home, protected yards so they could plant flowers, and the opportunity to sit outside without being the target of gangs. They asked for white windows and porch columns, just like a real neighborhood. The results had a dramatic impact on children's self-image and school performance, employment, and the homeownership program. The design, combined with an effective community policing program, dramatically reduced crime. The police chief once said, "The best crime deterrent is a low fence, flowers in the front yard, and porches—criminals decide there are easier places to work."
Porches were the key elements, but porches were not allowed under HUD (Department of Housing & Urban Development) policy at that time. They were considered a "luxury" rather than a necessity for the poor. After Diggs Town was put in place, I was invited to speak at several programs for HUD staff at HUD's headquarters. After the third time I went, a HUD staff person interrupted to tell me that they had changed the policy because of my previous two presentations. The HOPE VI program was just beginning, and I was invited to join discussions about design.
Another area of substantial impact was CNU’s Inner City Task Force. Peter Calthorpe encouraged Henry Cisneros to consider the principles of New Urbanism as a guide for designing HOPE VI projects. In 1996, the Charter of the New Urbanism describing 27 principles for traditional urbanism was created. Henry Cisneros was invited to CNU IV in Charleston to speak and to join the 100+ members of CNU to sign the Charter. In that session, he proposed a collaboration with CNU to provide design advice for the HOPE VI program. The CNU established the Inner City Task Force, which I chaired. Our work included: (1) conducting training programs for the HUD officials who would be evaluating proposals for funding, (2) providing design advice to projects that HUD determined needed improvement, (3) publishing guidelines based on the CNU Charter with examples, (4) Presenting programs at the Annual Congresses on HOPE VI, and (5) Publishing guidelines for accessibility and visitability for housing. The task force and Shelley Poticha, the Executive Director of the Congress of the New Urbanism, recruited volunteers from the organization to do this work which continued for many years.
Osth: Where did you encounter the most resistance to this approach, both on policy and implementation? What are a few of the lessons you learned?
Gindroz: Richmond Randolph was one of our first projects of this type and remains one of the most ground-breaking projects of its time. Recently, I was able to visit, and it remains a true neighborhood, as we had hoped. The challenges were specifically that the housing "delivery system" was used to deal with "projects," usually oriented around introverted green spaces. These were standard modern planning designs, in which apartment houses or townhouses were grouped around an enclosed green with parking around the perimeter. Our plan for Randolph included the elements of a traditional city: streets, alleys, blocks, houses, front and back yards, all of which were considered radical and impossible to administer.
To work through this issue, the housing authority organized a day-long working session with all the city departments and agencies involved. Here is an example: the public works department said the alleys and individual parking on each lot would be way too costly because of the amount of curbing along the alley and around each parking space. Then they remembered that these were "houses" in a neighborhood and not units in a project. There are no requirements for curbs around parking spaces on an individual lot, only for communal parking. All day long, the same thing happened for virtually every aspect of the project. In the end, there were no changes to our plan. One of the many lessons we learned is that transformational projects need a process for consensus within city departments, and often our community process is applied to develop the systems that allow us to change paradigms.
Diggs Town, which we just spoke about, was challenged under the same "project"-oriented issues. We were challenged by the specification of wooden columns and the proposal of new streets.
First Ward Charlotte is another. The bureaucratic process was relatively smooth, but there was skepticism about the feasibility of market-rate units in an area with 40 years of bad headlines. During the process, we shared examples of high-end New Urbanist projects that eventually won people over. Today, the neighborhood functions beautifully and remains another bright spot in the desirability of Charlotte. We learned that precedents are critical.
Osth: Thank you for the chance to look back on your long and storied career. I have always been impressed that you were always thinking several steps ahead. As we look ahead, what do you see?
Gindroz: Affordable housing, or rather, affordable homes, continues to be among the most difficult issues we face now and in the future. I see two general categories of solutions. The first is in the context of large-scale projects with large buildings. These provide good density and can be used to create good urbanism, but cannot be made to be affordable without subsidy. They are built by large construction companies whose labor rates and overheads add to the cost. More importantly, multifamily buildings require parking facilities, amenities, and usually involve the rebuilding or expanding of existing infrastructure, including streets and sidewalks. Since subsidies are provided by one or more levels of government, there is some uncertainty about the permanence of the subsidy. In Virginia, however, tax credit financing is guaranteed for 35 years and can be renewed for another 35 years.
The second is small-scale houses, cottages, tiny houses, and "detached apartments," all of which I see you working on at UDA across the U.S. Buildings of this scale can be built by small-scale home builders. The construction costs are lower, and the amenities and infrastructure needs are less onerous. The design challenge is to provide sufficient density to create walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. At UDA, we had been doing the first type of project for a long time, but it is becoming more and more difficult to continue. That means the second type may be the most effective way to proceed with innovative design. Small buildings can be flexible building blocks in creating very dense communities and a series of rich urban spaces.
Pattern books are a way of influencing small-scale dwellings. In 2007, the ICAA received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop “A Pattern Book for Neighborly Houses” for Habitat for Humanity. The grant was funded based on several national research studies that found that people would accept affordable housing in their neighborhood if it fits in. Through our work at UDA, we have found this to be true.
This was an important foundation for the Pattern Book: it told us that this was an architectural problem, rather than a social one, as it is generally assumed. You, [Osth], and I, with the UDA team, took on the task of developing the book. It was a memorable project and a beautiful document with the potential for national impact. Although it was featured by the national press, it had limited circulation as a print document. Today, we have an opportunity to reach millions with a similar approach and updated typologies in a digital platform. Affordable Housing is a challenge that we can help address, and the ICAA can lead these efforts.
Eric Osth is the current Chairman of UDA, a Board Member and Fellow of the ICAA, and the Chair of the Gindroz Award Panel.
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