Community betterment drives students’ affordable housing design

A group of North­eastern Uni­ver­sity grad­uate stu­dents in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs have placed second in the Fed­eral Home Loan Bank of Boston’s 16th annual Afford­able Housing Devel­op­ment Com­pe­ti­tion.

The stu­dents won $6,000 for their archi­tec­tural ren­dering of an afford­able housing devel­op­ment on a parcel of land on the Dorchester-​​Mattapan line, focusing on Morton Crossing, a lot located next to the Morton Street com­muter rail stop.

The developers-​​in-​​training— Chelsea Biggs, MPA’16, as well as Stephen Donovan, Sandra Larson, and Eric Goldman, all MS’15—designed the pro­posal for their cap­stone project. Three fac­ulty mem­bers super­vised the undertaking—James Con­nolly, an assis­tant pro­fessor of public policy and polit­ical sci­ence, Alicia Sasser Modestino, an associate professor of public policy and economics, and Gavin Shatkin, an asso­ciate pro­fessor with joint appoint­ments in the School of Archi­tec­ture and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs.

As part of the com­pe­ti­tion, teams of grad­uate stu­dents are paired with afford­able housing orga­ni­za­tions to develop inno­v­a­tive and com­pre­hen­sive devel­op­ment pro­posals that address the orga­ni­za­tions’ needs.

Con­nolly noted that this com­pe­ti­tion allows the orga­ni­za­tions to secure a professional-​​grade design pro­posal that will help move their devel­op­ment plans for­ward. “The norm with these projects is that a sub­stan­tial por­tion of what the stu­dents develop ends up get­ting trans­lated into the final product in some way,” he said.

The North­eastern stu­dents worked with their peers from Boston Archi­tec­tural Col­lege to create a plan for Codman Square Neigh­bor­hood Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, a non­profit afford­able housing devel­oper in Dorchester.

From left, Sandra Larson and Stephen Donovan, both MS’15, worked with Chelsea Biggs, MPA’16, and Eric Goldman, MS’15, not pictured, on an architectural design capstone project for a lot at Morton Crossing. James Connolly, an assistant professor of public policy and political science, was one of the group’s advisors.

At the start of the com­pe­ti­tion, 10 orga­ni­za­tions pitched their sites to the stu­dent groups, which were then tasked with ranking their favorites. The North­eastern team put Morton Crossing at the top of its list, par­tic­u­larly because of its loca­tion and mixed-​​use capabilities.

“I liked the poten­tial of having a mixed-​​use site with some com­mer­cial built in and some­thing that was transit ori­ented,” Donovan said.

The stu­dents cre­ated a plan for 35 units of afford­able housing, 23 of which would be reserved for fam­i­lies. They also built in com­mer­cial space for three dif­ferent tenants.

Larson noted that the stu­dents reached out to local groups and busi­nesses to present hypo­thet­ical oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to set up shop in the com­mer­cial spaces. A few busi­nesses expressed interest in moving their oper­a­tions to that location.

“A big part of the project was coming up with ideas for the com­mer­cial space,” Larson said. “We talked to people in the com­mu­nity and dis­cov­ered that a lot of them wished for some­thing that would engage young people or teens, and have some kind of gath­ering spot for the neighborhood.”

-By Joe O’Connell