CREJ

August 2021 — Multifamily Properties Quarterly — Page 43 www.crej.com Affordable Housing T he Abo Group is a well-estab- lished architectural practice that has been in business for over 40 years. The firm has withstood shifts in the indus- try and downturns in the economy – none more challenging than the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm does not specialize in multifamily hous- ing or any specific type of architec- ture. Our focus is to serve our clients by providing design services that critically examine the context of the project and involve the client and user intimately in the design pro- cess. Our firm was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic as many of our clients were institutional or public, like Savio, a nonprofit child well- ness organization based in Denver. In addition to my work with the Abo Group, I am the president of the board of trustees of Savio House. Pre- pandemic, together with Joshua Pruyn, the development officer of Savio House, we spear- headed a new type of development for the nonprofit – an innovative multifamily hous- ing project that will integrate sub- stance use treatment and its exist- ing services to support Colorado families facing addiction. I donated my time to develop the design and approached the city of Lakewood to determine the feasibility of the proj- ect. The multifamily project will fea- ture six units and have an attached counseling center. Each living unit is an attached two- story townhome (one townhome is a one-story wheelchair- accessible unit) and designed to fit into an existing neighborhood with a mix of single- family and multi- family residences. This program is unique when it comes to addiction treatment as it focuses on keeping families in authentic home environ- ments, instead of feeling institu- tional. The main floor plan consists of an open living, dining and kitchen area to encourage family interaction and support the family’s therapeutic goals. The three bedrooms upstairs include one master bedroom to give the adults privacy and allow for them to work on strengthening their relationships and two bedrooms intended for children. The attached counseling center will be staffed 24/7 and have office space, counseling rooms, meeting and training areas, and sleeping quarters. There also will be extra bedrooms for children; this feature allows for the possibility that par- ents may be unable to care for their children momentarily due to the realities of addiction recovery. The program is unique, as it will be the first in the country to allow all family members to remain together while one or more parents seeks addiction treatment. By January Pandemic-stalled treatment center project restarts Ron Abo Principal architect, Abo Group Joshua Pruyn Development officer, Savio House A rendering of the Savio Family Treatment Center Please see Abo, Page 44 W hen the COVID-19 pan- demic caused the shut- down of most businesses, Caddis Collaborative, a Boulder-based architecture firm for which affordable hous- ing is about one-third of our work, was grateful to avoid much of the impact. All but one person in our small office of nine staff mem- bers began to work from home in early March 2020. We already were accustomed to working remotely from home and for clients around the country, so we were fairly well positioned for this transition. We have a mostly long-tenured group of employees, so those well-rooted connections supported working remotely. A couple of our prospects, which included some affordable housing, dried up because of shifts in municipal tax bases and fund- ing shortages. But in large part, we were fortunate. We have a diverse cross-section of projects, and we’re generally as busy as we choose to be. Much of our work comes from repeat clients, and those relation- ships held strong throughout the pandemic. Even with our continued client load, however, we felt the impact of the pandemic and learned new ways to work as a result. Some of those learnings related to staffing: How many of us can work from home, and what’s the right mix? Other learnings related to workflow: How much work do we really want to accomplish in a week, and what’s the right work-life balance? Others were architectural: In what ways could our workspace evolve to better support our lives and our work? We have shifted some of our employment practices, have rethought how we staff projects, and are now in the process of moving our office (about 50 feet away to a larger space here in the mixed-use, mixed-income Holiday Neigh- borhood of north Boulder) to bring in a few new employ- ees and create more effective and pleasant spaces. One new project for us, which grew entirely out of the pandemic, is the significant remodel of a housing authority’s office space, all with similar adaptive goals that track with our own lived experi- ences. At a larger scale, the pandemic brought much uncertainty and vola- tility to the building industry. We know of other architecture firms that saw much more impact. Con- struction costs have been highly unpredictable, with changing prices in commodities markets, ship- ping and manufacturing. And the labor market is tighter than ever. These macro issues affect what we can design and how we can stick to a budget when some costs are unknowable. Demand for housing has spiked, and the housing cri- sis has intensified. The pandemic stimulated a “Zoom boom” – the move to desirable locations outside of coastal cities – which is impact- ing even the smallest towns of Colo- rado. With people no longer having to work in a particular place, the demand for new housing outside of urban areas has skyrocketed. Add to that more restrictive planning, zoning, building codes and approval processes, and you see construction prices being driven up in parallel with the residential real estate mar- ket. Not surprisingly, our affordable housing developer clients crave a certainty of outcomes, especially regarding budget, that is hard to provide. Our clients have seen big impacts as well. Our co-housing clients worry about escalating construc- tion costs and are adapting to learn how to do more with passive afford- ability – sharing of spaces, smaller units, greater energy efficiency, sim- pler design, lower maintenance, as well as innovative tools like internal cross subsidies and partnerships with institutions or local govern- ment. Affordable housing developers and housing authorities are trying to complete their funded projects on budget and on schedule. Builders are scrambling to find help and keep subs. Those in the predevelopment phase are trying to figure out how to predict costs and the market and to think about how those factors impact traditional funding sources, especially as the demand for afford- Moving forward together through the recovery Bryan Bowen, LEED AP, NCARB, AIA Principal architect, Caddis Collaborative Ponderosa Community in north Boulder Please see Bowen, Page 44