Affordable Housing Development Competition

The Somerville Community Corporation recently sponsored a student team for the 2010 Affordable Housing Development Competition. Students from graduate programs in planning and real estate development team up with local developers to create detailed development proposals for securing affordable housing. Each proposals is to be, "specific enough — as to the proposed development's economic, physical, and political feasibility — to convince a financial institution to make a predevelopment loan."

Jeremy Wilkening has passed along the students proposal for the Kiley Barrel site in Union Square (you can find it in our studio document/readings folder or click here).

The nature of this exercise demands an enormous amount of teamwork and coordination. The depth of the proposal from SCC's group illustrates the diverse range of factors to be considered when developing in urban corridors. This proposal also demonstrates the degree to which projects are realized prior to the architectural design process. I imagine that many of the students who put this proposal together have training in architectural design however, the exercise is ultimately focused on feasibility related to costs. With that said, this report is shaped nicely by local census data from the U.S. Census Bureau , market analysis, funding sources, proforma analysis, apartment layout studies, sustainable systems consideration, cultural context analysis and even data from a survey they wrote.