Housing for the homeless: Q&A with Sam Davis, Berkeley professor and affordable-housing architect

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/10/25_architecture.html

In an article published in late 2002, architect and former chair of UC Berkeley’s architecture department Sam Davis speaks about the issues involved in providing housing for the poor and homeless. He has completed significant research on architecture for the homeless and has authored two previous books, The Form of Housing and The Architecture of Affordable Housing. He has also collaborated with other design firms and nonprofits on many homeless and affordable housing projects, including the first-phased renovation of University Village, UC Berkeley’s married-student housing in Albany; a 100-bed homeless shelter in Contra Costa County; Larkin Street Youth Services of San Francisco’s facility for homeless youth with HIV and AIDS; and Lark-Inn, a transitional shelter on San Francisco’s Ellis Street for homeless and runaway kids.

Davis says that a common misconception about the homeless population is that it is homogeneous when it is not. The homeless consist of families with children, of seniors, of people who are mentally and physically ill, of people with substance abuses, and runaway kids. Each of these populations has different housing and services needs. Thus, builders have to understand what those people’s needs, ambitions and desires are, and balance them with other things like the community context and the budget.

Another misconception is that using low-cost materials will allow for more housing. Davis says the construction costs are a relatively minor component of a project’s total, not nearly as important as the cost of financing, the cost of land, the soft costs and the political costs.

To lower costs and increase the number of affordable housing units built, Davis says it is important to balance repetition – which saves money – with architectural interest. The more elements are repeated such as structural frames, bathrooms, kitchens, cabinets, the more you save. However, focusing only on such cost-savings measures will produce the type of public housing no one likes. Instead, Davis describes the challenge as that of using architectural gestures where they have the most impact, like bay windows and covered entries. Such additions do not significantly increase costs, but they do add much to variety and function.

Davis also believes that it is important that homeless people not get isolated and that they be integrated as much as possible into mainstream housing. Most of his projects have been low-rise, freestanding units, which he attributes to the fact that most people want to live in a single-family detached house. Davis believes that the goal of affordable housing should be to supply as many of the amenities of the single-family house as possible. For instance, with University Village in Albany, the goal was to construct sets of individual houses, in which every single apartment has its own front door and own address.

While providing housing for the homeless comes at the expense of the public’s tax dollars, society itself benefits from well-designed places for the homeless. Davis speaks of the millions of dollars spent to hide the homeless and clean up after them. He believes this money can be put to better use with more and better facilities. Then, the homeless people are not only removed from the street, but they are also integrated into the community.