La Casa Permanent Supportive Housing
This publication documents how the Studio Twenty Seven Architecture | Leo A Daly joint venture team designed La Casa to inspire pride and a sense of community membership in its residents. It is a building that leverages the power of spatial autonomy with the context of a secure, supportive environment to encourage the rehabilitation of its residents. Not quite an apartment building, nor a dorm or shelter, La Casa is a new typology for housing the homeless.
Fragment is an episodic publication of Studio Twenty Seven Architecture. Each issue is dedicated to a singular idea, project, or element associated with the art of architecture published to foster future dialogues on architecture.
La Casa is a permanent supportive housing facility in the District of Columbia. Rather than function as a shelter, La Casa provides permanent, supportive housing for 40 men. Before La Casa opened in late 2014, the city operated a variety of housing types and models to accommodate the homeless, most of which focused on temporary, nightly shelter. The La Casa Permanent Supportive Housing Project provides private dwelling units with full living spaces, kitchens, and baths for the chronically homeless. The stability and autonomy provided by permanent housing helps residents develop healthier and more independent lifestyles.
The District of Columbia Department of General Services selected the joint venture team of Studio Twenty Seven Architecture | Leo A Daly to design this premiere project. One of La Casa’s central design challenges was to create home rather than institution. It was paramount that the city wanted a building that defies the homeless shelter archetype. The site was a design challenge with strict parameters – massing was largely predetermined by the need to fit as many units as possible within the envelope defined by zoning. Building system and material decisions were driven by concerns for immediate and long-term costs, maintenance, and technical performance. Both the client and the design team also recognized that this project held a potential to symbolize the city’s plan to use supportive housing to address chronic homelessness.
The notion that La Casa is experienced by its residents as a home, rather than an institution, is crucial to its success as a supportive housing facility. The living units are bright, simple, and efficient. Aperiodic floor-to-ceiling windows give each resident a unique perspective of the busy urbanscape outside. Full kitchens and accessible bathrooms allow residents space to care for themselves. The interior finishes are durable but characteristically domestic – the warm grain of a wood floor, the brightness of colored tile, or the weathered patina of exposed concrete are details that are resonate to human perception.
La Casa is an efficient and sustainable building that does not sacrifice open and active design. At the scale of the street, its facades bend in response to busy sidewalks and shaded pocket parks. Its two-story, fully-glazed lobby provides visual access to the interior, inviting passing community members to engage in the facility’s mission. The building’s regular form and shallow facade are activated by the irregular pattern of windows into the living units. Dark voids during the day and projections of light at night, the windows are framed by layers of cladding in low relief. The energy of Irving Street is imprinted on the facade as a rippling gradient of light, intense at the building core and slowly fading to calm at the building edges.
The Studio Twenty Seven Architecture | Leo A Daly team designed La Casa to inspire pride and a sense of community membership in its residents. It is a building that leverages the power of spatial autonomy with the context of a secure, supportive environment to encourage the rehabilitation of its residents. Not quite an apartment building, nor a dorm or shelter, La Casa is a new typology for housing the homeless.
Homelessness is not one experience – it is a continuum. At its least extreme are people that spend a day or two in the shelter system. At its most extreme are the chronically homeless, people who have been homeless for a long time and suffer from a disabling condition. Almost all instances of homelessness are a response to a deficiency of affordable housing opportunities.
As a Permanent Supportive Housing facility, La Casa is home to people with histories of chronic homelessness as well as the medical and social services that will help them establish independence. La Casa is a Housing First program; there are no sobriety or employment requirements for new tenants. Residents can more effectively combat addiction, find employment, and improve their mental and physical health when provided with a safe, reliable, and autonomous housing condition.
Homelessness emerged as a prominent national issue in the 1980s. In the decades following World War II, the country’s economic focus shifted to the suburbs. Cities, depopulated and devoid of new development, were viewed as centers for crime and social deviance. Aggressive regulation against low-cost and single room occupancy housing options, urban renewal programs, and slashes to the federal budget for housing assistance led to a sharp decrease in affordable housing options. This trend, together with the deinstitutionalization of mental health treatment and a stagnant economy, caused the rate of homelessness to swell. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, passed in 1987, helped to establish emergency shelters, soup kitchens, and other supportive services in communities nationwide. The rate of homelessness, however, remained high. It became apparent that working to mitigate the symptoms of homelessness – hunger, physical and mental health problems, or nights spent on the streets – did not solve the condition of homelessness itself.
In the mid ‘90s, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began encouraging communities to consolidate all efforts to provide housing and service to the homeless under planning bodies called Continuums of Care. CoCs are a framework to direct cooperation between the federal government, local governments, and private institutions to address all states of homelessness. HUD identified four necessary components of a continuum: a mechanism for identifying victims of homelessness and connecting them to support services, emergency shelters, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing.
With this restructuring, communities have shifted their focus to solving the condition of homelessness through affordable housing — preemptive support for people at risk of becoming homeless, rapid rehousing for the newly homeless, and permanent supportive housing for the chronic homeless. This strategy is working – despite high unemployment and foreclosure rates, the homeless population in America is decreasing.1
Though the chronic homeless now represent less than 15% of the general homeless population, more than half of the funds devoted to fighting all homelessness is used for their care. Emergency services often associated with chronic homelessness – emergency room visits, hospitalizations for medical or psychiatric care, rooms in detoxification facilities or nursing homes, and incarceration – are expensive.
Permanent Supportive Housing is a much more cost effective option. According to a study published in 2009, the average cost of housing and services for a resident at the 1811 Eastlake facility in Seattle was $30,000 less per year than caring for a chronically homeless individual without housing. The savings increased to $36,000 after 12 months in housing.2 The healthcare costs for residents of a permanent supportive facility called Moore Place in Charlotte, North Carolina fell by $1.8 million annually after they moved in.3
- The homeless population in the United States dropped by 11% between 2007 and 2014. AHAR 2014, p. 1
- Mary E Larmier et all, “Healthcare and Public Service Use and Costs Before and After Provision of Housing for Chronically Homeless Persons with Severe Alcohol Problems,” April 1, 2009, The Journal of the American Medical Association, 301(13): 1349-1357
- Kathleen Miles, “Housing the Homeless Not Only Saves Lives – It’s Actually Cheaper Than Doing Nothing” Huffington Post, March 25, 2014
“When people are in housing, everyone benefits. [The best way to combat homelessness is] by providing more housing opportunities.”
~ Laura Zelinger, Executive Director for the US Interagency on Homelessness
in Nathan Rott’s “Bilingual DC Homelessness Shelter to Close” The Washington Post, October 2, 2010
Even as homelessness is decreasing nationwide, the homeless population in Washington, DC continues to grow. The city’s economy and population are expanding rapidly, largely at the expense of those who depend on affordable housing. The District lost half of its low cost rental housing stock and 72% of its low-value homes between 2000 and 2010. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment increased by half, and the median home value nearly doubled. Meanwhile, household incomes for the poorest 40% of DC residents did not increase; in 2010, one in five DC households spent more than half of their income on housing.4
The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness (TCP), DC’s CoC program, conducts a point-in-time count of the homeless population each January. In 2014, TCP counted nearly 8,000 people spending the night without a home – up 18% since 2010.5 Of this number, approximately 400 are found on District streets, 6,000 in “low barrier” or emergency shelters, and 1,600 in transitional housing facilities. Half are individuals, half are part of homeless families.
4. “Homelessness in Metropolitan Washington, Results and Analysis from the 2014 Point-in-Time Count of Homeless Persons in the Metropolitan Washington Region,” Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s Homeless Services Planning and Coordinating Committee, May 14, 2014. p. 7
5. Jenny Reed, “Disappearing Act: Affordable Housing in DC is Vanishing Amid Sharply Rising Housing Costs,” May 7, 2012, DC Fiscal Policy Institute
“The greatest barrier to ending homelessness in our communities is the lack of fixed, affordable permanent housing opportunities for the lowest income households.”
“Homelessness in Metropolitan Washington, Results and Analysis from the 2014 Point-in-Time Count of Homeless Persons in the Metropolitan Washington Region,” p. 1
In the same count, 2,165 are chronically homeless (45% of all singles, 10% of families).6 Although chronic homelessness in DC has fallen by 15% since 2010, it fell by twice as much – 30% – nationwide in the same period of time. 7
The District and its partners are making an effort to convert transitional housing programs to permanent supportive housing. In the 2014 count, TCP inventoried 3,639 units of permanent supportive housing for individuals and 871 for families.8 Most of these units are the scattered-site model of supportive housing, where housing subsidies are paired with support services that make in-home visits. The first public single-site facility, Erna’s House, opened in March 2012. It is an apartment building repurposed to house 31 women with histories of chronic homelessness, funded and managed by a partnership between the DC Department of Human Services (DHS) and N Street Village, a nearby private women’s shelter.
6. “Homelessness in Metropolitan Washington, 2014,” 49
7. ibid. 20
8. ibid. 50
“The District wants to break the notion that homeless care facilities are institutional, generic unpleasant places to be… La Casa will change the perception of the public and the perception of the residents.”
~ Department of General Services dgs.dc.gov/lacasa_project
La Casa, which opened in December 2014, is the first facility in the city designed and built ground up as Permanent Supportive Housing. Its carefully orchestrated program is a mix of private and public spaces, maximizing the number of individual living units in the 25,000 square foot building while laying the groundwork for an open, supportive community.
The 40 single-occupancy units are designed for efficiency and durability, but also to be easily identified by residents as home. Inspired by more costly studio loft apartments, each dwelling unit provides floor-to-ceiling operable windows for natural daylighting and ventilation. Ninety percent of all interior space has views to the exterior. The units offer functional simplicity, coupling a hybrid living, eating, and kitchen space with a sleeping niche. Warm and durable flooring of exposed concrete and bamboo complements quiet, crisp white walls and a refined gray kitchen.
Collectively, La Casa operates as a community. Communal spaces are interspersed with offices where residents can seek counseling, case management, and employment and housing placement assistance. The finishes in the building’s public spaces – textured ceramic tile, carpet tile, and exposed concrete – prioritize warmth, beauty, and durability. The facility is built to minimize maintenance requirements while feeling like home.
Each living unit is fully handicap accessible, utilizing universal design principals to cater to the 28% of program participants who have physical disabilities. All public areas are equipped with power assisted entries and accessible hardware, corridors are well illuminated, and all building signage is tactile.
A home rather than an institution, La Casa is a project that represents a change in the way a city addresses homelessness. It is a blended effort of both architecture and social services to impede the growth of the homeless population.
below:
Typical unit from entrance;
Eating area of a typical unit
La Casa is located in Columbia Heights, a neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, DC. It sits among mid-rise residential buildings, street-level restaurants, and a retail complex on Irving Street, just a half-block west of the Columbia Heights station of the DC Metro subway system.
The Metro station is a transportation hub; the surrounding urban infrastructure supports travel by rail, bus, foot, and – owned or shared – cars and bicycles. These multi-modal transportation opportunities allow La Casa tenants to travel easily and conveniently throughout the city, extending their access to city resources and employment possibilities beyond the immediate area.
Because of the city’s need to accommodate as many residents as possible on the site, La Casa’s massing is largely informed by zoning restrictions – its height and the alignment of its primary facades (including the 12-foot setback along Irving Street) are at the maximum allowance. The dimension of the rear courtyard reduces the building mass just enough to achieve the required floor-to-area ratios and provides light and air to the rear facing units.
Yet, as a building symbolic of community action to reconceptualize care of the homeless, La Casa has important urban responsibilities. To ensure that the building is experienced as an integral part of the surrounding neighborhood, the design team made meaningful adjustments to the volume prescribed by the zoning parameters.
A subtle cant of the first levels of the north façade – at the scale of the street – provides a foreground to the entry and relief to the adjacent pocket park. The canted wall folds back, carving the two-story, fully-glazed lobby from the northeast corner of the building mass. The layers of glazing provide visual access to the interior, inviting the gaze of a community that is in fact an important participant in the rehabilitation of the La Casa residents. At night, the transparent lobby is a lantern set within the urban fabric, greeting Columbia Heights residents as they exit the Metro station on their commute home, to run an errand, or to grab a bite to eat.
La Casa’s seven-story height balances the nine-story building facades that face 14th Street and the four- and five-story buildings on Irving Street. Just as it supports members of the Columbia Heights community in their acclimation to the modern housing economy, the building is a physical link between the historic fabric of Columbia Heights and the new development at its center.
COLUMBIA HEIGHTS
Columbia Heights was an early suburb of DC, located just north of the city’s original northern boundary at Florida Avenue. It was named for Columbian College, founded near Meridian Hill Park in 1822, which was renamed George Washington University and relocated to downtown DC in 1912.
Supported by streetcars that connected the neighborhood to downtown DC along 16th, 14th and 11th Streets NW, Columbia Heights thrived. Large apartment buildings and blocks of row houses built in the early 20th century added an urban character to the once suburban landscape. The Tivoli Theater, an ornate cinema, and The Arcade, an entertainment center, anchored the neighborhood’s central commercial corridor along 14th Street NW.
Columbia Heights has always been diverse, but not always integrated. 13th Street NW was the neighborhood’s unofficial racial divide into the 1930s, until the booming black middle class community spilled west as white residents moved to suburbs further from the city. The all-white Central High School, at the neighborhood’s southeast corner, closed in 1940 due to low enrollment. By the time the all-black Cardozo High School moved into the building in 1950, Columbia Heights was predominately black.
“When people think about all the shops and chic clubs and nightclubs [built along 14th Street NW in the last decade], I think about how this was once a thriving urban corridor.
It was not only cultural black Washington, but commercial black Washington.”
Ernest Drew Jarvis
in “Memories of Mayhem and Mercy”
The Washington Post, April 7, 2008
Hard times hit the neighborhood, known also as Cardozo, in the 60s. In 1960, 25% of the city’s welfare recipients lived within the Cardozo school district. The 14th Street commercial corridor was largely destroyed in the riots that swept DC following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Damage to property in Columbia Heights was valued at (in 2015 dollars) $44.9 million. After the riots, the city bulldozed 70 acres of land in the neighborhood – including 4,000 homes and 270 of the 320 businesses along 14th Street – hoping in vain to attract new development. Instead, residents continued to move to the suburbs, leaving even more property vacant; those that stayed faced soaring rates of poverty and crime.2
2. Kraft 2010, 253
In the subsequent decades, a largely-immigrant Hispanic population moved into the neighborhood, blurring racial divides between white and black. La Casa (Spanish for the house) was established on Irving Street in 1985; it originally operated as both a traditional low-barrier emergency shelter and transitional housing facility for both English- and Spanish-speaking homeless men. A one-story brick structure and five construction trailers were lined with bunk beds, housing 130 men overnight.
In the wake of a severe District-wide economic crisis in the mid-‘90s, the city chartered the National Capital Revitalization Corporation (NCRC) to manage and develop District-owned property in underserved and emerging neighborhoods. The city also used federal funding to expand its Metro system to struggling areas of the city. The Columbia Heights station, located a half-block from La Casa at 14th and Irving Street, opened in 1999. The new Metro station helped the NCRC to attract large-scale development surrounding La Casa, including the DC USA complex – urbanized big-box retail – and several residential buildings.
In 2002, a subsidiary of the NCRC chose Bethesda-based Donatelli Development to build a mixed-use complex on the southwest corner of 14th and Irving Streets, including the land occupied by La Casa. In 2004, the corporation requested that Donatelli’s plans be augmented to include a single room occupancy facility to replace the existing shelter. The developer and city filed a joint application to the zoning commission requesting the creation of a Planned Development Unit – La Casa’s original site was partially zoned for residential development (R-5-B); the entire PUD would be rezoned as commercial (C-3-A) to accommodate the dense program.
The first phase of the Highland Park development, a 229-unit structure between La Casa and the Metro station’s western entrance, opened in 2008. The original La Casa shelter closed its doors in October of 2010 – its residents relocated to other facilities or placed in scattered-site supportive housing – and construction began on the 144-unit Highland Park addition.
La Casa, which became a permanent supportive housing facility rather than a single room occupancy shelter to take advantage of federal CoC funding, opened its doors to 40 residents in December 2014.