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Common Ground Community’s supportive housing residence, The Prince George, is the recipient of the 2002 World Habitat award.

The award was presented to Roseanne Haggerty, president and founder of Common Ground and Tony Hannigan, executive director of The Center for Community Urban Services (CUCS) during the World Habitat Day celebration in Brazil.

The World Habitat Awards were established in 1985 by the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) as part of its contribution to the United Nations International Year of Shelter for the Homeless.

Ms. Haggerty said, “The Prince George exemplifies the caliber of housing that can be achieved when innovation, historical and environmental preservation and community integration meet.”

The Prince George, on East 28 th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Manhattan, provides 416 units of permanent affordable supportive housing for low-income, special needs and previously homeless single adults including those living with HIV/AIDS, those with mental illness and the elderly.
Common Ground purchased The Prince George in 1996 and began an extensive rehabilitation to transform the landmark.

WILLIMANTIC — The buzzing of machinery in Windham Regional Vocational-Technical School’s carpentry shop was nonstop last week.

That’s because students worked constantly on the CNC router table to meet a big deadline last Friday.

The project entails using the CNC, or computerized numeric control, router to cut out various pieces of wood that will be assembled in New York City.

They will be used as partitions for a show to feature winning designs for a program aimed at transitioning the homeless to permanent housing.

Windham Tech acquired the $100,000 CNC machine in April 2001 and remains the only technical school in the state to have one, according to program director Dudley Brand.

The design show, co-sponsored by Common Ground Community and the Architectural League of New York, will officially open Nov. 12 at Common Ground’s Prince George Hotel in on 28th Street.

On display will be creative designs for Common Ground’s latest housing project at The Andrews House, located in the lower east side, Manhattan neighborhood known as The Bowery.

What brought the New York-based nonprofit housing developer and the carpentry program together was an Internet search for discount CNC work, according to Brand.

Common Ground has not only gotten a discount, but has enjoyed working with the school.

“They have been just phenomenal helping us get this up and running,” said Deborah Samuelson, director of communications for Common Ground.

The minimum charge for such a project at a private company would exceed $100 an hour, according to Brand, but the school has been able to offer a steep discount for use of the machine.

“Normally we don’t work at such a fast pace,” Brand said. “Another challenge for us with this project is to meet this deadline.”

Jesse Trinque, 16, took a quick break from stacking the birch plywood pieces to talk about the project while his classmates, Jake Garrison, 17, and Matt Huhn, 16, set up the next piece of plywood.

“Basically, we’ve spent all out time in the shop,” Trinque said of the hectic schedule.

The students only learned of the project in September. As soon as the plans came in via e-mail from Common Ground, they began working steadily to get the project complete.

The project not only gives students technical skills for a future career, but an awareness of the problem of homelessness, according to Brand.

Common Ground’s plan for The Andrews House is called “First Step Housing” and hopes to create “an entry-point program to get people off the streets into permanent housing,” Samuelson said.

Common Ground recently acquired a historic and long-vacant six-story building at 410 Asylum St. in Hartford for development into supportive housing.

The group has also expressed interest in the Hotel Hooker in Willimantic.

Brand said he hopes to take the students down to New York to see their work at the design show.

“Hopefully, this is going to open up some more doors,” said David Grenier, instructor in the carpentry shop.

Windham Tech has already been contacted about potential jobs using the CNC router with the Parsons School of Design in New York as well as a project in Colorado.

Another, more local partnership, is between the carpentry department and the Willimantic Victorian Neighborhood Association.

The shop acquired a profile molder in April that can be used to duplicate Victorian-style moldings.

180 Submitted Designs for “First Step Housing” Competition

Exhibition Featuring Entries and Winning Designs Opens November 12th

Design Jury included Michael Bell, Julie Eizenberg, Andrew Freear, Steven Holl and Toshiko Mori
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October 28, 2003, New York – Common Ground Community and The Architectural League of New York’s First Step Housing design competition ended this week with five entries sharing top honors.

Competitors were asked to design a prototypical individualized dwelling unit and the layout of 19 such units on a typical floor of The Andrews – Common Ground’s lodging house on the Bowery - which will shortly be renovated to house the First Step Housing Program. First Step will offer private, safe, clean and affordable short-term accommodations to individuals who are transitioning to housing, facing homelessness, or who have rejected or failed in other programs.

“First Step Housing will reach out to homeless individuals who do not access the City’s shelters by reinventing the traditional lodging house and offering private, safe, clean and affordable short-term accommodations,” said Rosanne Haggerty, president and founder of Common Ground Community. “We’re overwhelmed not only by the response to our competition but how each entry reflected the importance of addressing the needs of these individuals with well-designed living spaces that are attractive, functional, and cost effective to build.”

180 entries were received from 13 countries, ranging from individual applicants to school groups to design firms. Jurors for the competition included Steven Holl, Architect and Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University; Michael Bell, Associate Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University; Julie Eizenberg, Koning Eizenberg Architecture; Andrew Freear, Director, Rural Studio, Auburn University; Toshiko Mori, Professor in Practice and Chair, Harvard Design School; Rosalie Genevro, Executive Director of the Architectural League and Ms. Haggerty.

“There were a number of interesting submissions for this extremely constrained problem,” said Mr. Holl. “Five submissions stood out for different reasons, including material invention in one, concept in another, etc. I look forward to the individual development and realization by each talented young team. It will be a challenge for certain but we hope the problem of these minimal rooms can be invigorated by the inspirations of young architects.”

Said Ms. Genevro, “we were extremely impressed with the thoughtfulness many of the competitors brought to the challenge of creating comfort and accommodation in these very small spaces, and with the ingenuity, skill, and attention to detail they brought to issues of replicability and cost. The economic and technical pressures that constrain this housing are fierce, but we believe these fresh ideas can help open a new realm of possibility for First Step housing.”

Ms. Mori felt “the winners embodied five essential practical issues in addition to conceptual strength in their design: units designed as a kit of parts; material innovation; spatial unity; the need for improved common spaces for community interaction, and the pre-fab and modular construction necessary for phasing the project. They gave their units a sense of individuality and privacy at the same time.”

An exhibition featuring the 180 entries from the competition as well as the winning designs will open in The Ballroom at The Prince George on Wednesday, November 12th and will run through December 12th. The Prince George is located at 14 East 28th Street. For more information on exhibition hours and how to get to The Prince George please call 212-389-9300 or visit Common Ground’s website at www.commonground.org.

• The winners of the First Step Housing Competition are:
  • “Soft House”
    Forsythe + MacAllen Design, Vancouver British Columbia
    Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen
  • “Nesting”
    Harvard Design School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
    Students David Gwinn, Basil Lee and Tom McMahon
  • “Kit of Parts”
    LifeForm, New York, New York
    Rafi Elbaz, Nanna Wulfing and Julia Tate
  • “The Ordering of Things”
    New York, New York
    Katherine Chang and Aaron Gabriel
  • “Cocoon”
    Brooklyn, New York
    Daniela Fabricius

Each team will receive a $2,000 cash prize. The winners whose final designs are manufactured and installed at The Andrews House will also be paid a design fee.

The Architectural League is one of the country’s leading forums for the presentation and discussion of important work and ideas in contemporary architecture and design. Through exhibitions, lectures, competitions, publications and special events, the League helps architects, designers and the public enrich their understanding of architecture and its critical contributions to public life.

Common Ground Community is a non-profit housing and community development organization whose mission is to end homelessness through innovative programs that transform people, buildings and communities.

# # #

Program to Help the Homeless Gathers Momentum

Ted Evanicki is basking in his newfound stability.

Suffering from depression and mild schizophrenia, the Vietnam veteran drifted for years between homeless shelters and halfway houses across the city until a room finally became available at Holland House, a 361-unit supportive housing residence near Times Square. Today, he’s taking his medicine, seeing his psychiatrist monthly and volunteering at a nearby mental health center.
“This place has given me a sense of independence and an incentive to keep my illness under control,” says Mr. Evanicki.

A cut above shelters

Inspired by many such success stories and by studies showing that supportive housing residences are far more cost-effective than traditional shelters, public authorities have been pouring money into constructing and staffing such centers. Almost 1,400 supportive housing units in dozens of buildings are scheduled for completion in New York City by this time next year.

Such facilities offer shelter for thousands of homeless families and provide on-site social services to help those living with drug addiction, AIDS, mental health disorders and other problems that can lead to homelessness. The residents contribute to the rent, paying a third of their income from benefit programs like disability. The government and nonprofit agencies pick up the rest.

The construction boom in supportive housing is the concrete realization of a major shift in thinking among government agencies: They have come to favor permanent supportive housing over emergency shelters that deal with the symptoms of homelessness but not the causes.

Funding for construction is coming from a variety of local, state and federal agencies, as well as private charities.

The biggest single source is a joint city and state program called the New York/New York Agreement to House Homeless Mentally Ill Individuals. Launched in April 1999, it has to date contributed approximately $230 million for the development of 2,300 housing units. Recently, the New York State Office of Mental Health announced it would pay for 900 units, at a cost of about $90 million.

A potentially major breakthrough in funding came earlier this month: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and several other federal agencies gave Project Renewal, the agency that runs Holland House, a $2.8 million grant for building supportive housing. It’s the first time these agencies have paid for such a project, and if it works out, they may become the source of future funds.

New funds could also help the cash-strapped Bloomberg administration. Its relatively moderate spending on programs to prevent homelessness has provoked criticism from advocates for the homeless, who note that the number of people living on the streets is still rising. With other sources more than filling the gap in city spending, the overall picture is one of increasing funding and rising construction levels.

“The movement toward ending homelessness has been markedly re-energized,” says Rosanne Haggerty, president of Common Ground Community, a nonprofit community development organization that is scheduled to open a 167-unit supportive housing residence in Chelsea in January.

By the numbers

In the past 12 months, 17 projects with a total of 737 units have been built across the city. Another 25 buildings with 1,360 units are slated for completion between next month and November of next year. Starting in early 2005, 55 additional developments with 3,000 units will be under way.

Nonprofit social service agencies turned low-cost housing developers–such as Common Ground, Community Access, and Housing and Services Inc.–are among the biggest builders. Most are under contract with the city, state or federal government.

Community Access, for example, has four large projects under construction, including a 65-unit building on DeKalb Street in Brooklyn that is expected to open on Jan. 1. The agency, which advertised the new building for one day, has about 900 applications for the units.

For government officials, the attractiveness of the new facilities is increasingly clear. It costs between $25,000 and $50,000 a year to house one person in a shelter, but only about $15,000 to subsidize a resident of supportive housing, according to a recent University of Pennsylvania study for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national nonprofit agency.

In the longer term, the government could save even more money on supportive housing as residents benefit from the rehabilitation and job training available on site. These services could help them move out of the social welfare system altogether.

Teresa Thompson, a recovered drug addict who is a resident of Community Access’ 67-unit building on Warren Street in Brooklyn, says she’s ready to begin planning a new and productive life.

A success story

Ms. Thompson was sleeping on chairs in a homeless shelter in Manhattan before she was diagnosed with breast cancer two and a half years ago. Following a mastectomy, she was fast-tracked into a studio apartment at the Warren Street location, which was completed in 2000.

Now that she’s in remission, Ms. Thompson is building up her savings, adding the cash she earns through occasional work as a seamstress to her disability income. She plans to move back to her hometown of New Bedford, Mass., and start a small business teaching sewing classes.

Such success stories rarely emerge from the city’s emergency shelters. Last year, the city government spent about $180 million on the temporary shelters. But the shelter system has created a population of long-term residents among the chronically homeless, and it has done little to prevent growing numbers of people from living on the streets.

Of course, the system is also coping with an alarming increase in the number of homeless families, brought about by the recession. As of July, there were 9,268 families staying in shelters each night on average, up from 8,168 in July 2002. All told, more than 38,000 people lived in emergency shelters this summer, up from 31,000 in 2002.

In response, the city is trying to make better use of limited resources by taking a more targeted approach to the problem. Last December, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced an increase of about $43 million to the $30 million budget for supportive housing for youths and families.

Furthermore, a new rule requires developers of supportive housing to make half of all new vacancies available to the chronically homeless, who use up about half of the city’s temporary housing resources.

“Taking this more focused approach is a very smart move on the part of the administration,” says Maureen Friar, executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York.

Copyright 2003, Crain Communications, Inc

WILLIMANTIC — A New York-based housing developer definitely has an interest in acquiring the Hotel Hooker.

First Selectman Michael Paulhus confirmed Thursday that Common Ground Community, which has transformed historic properties in Manhattan into supportive housing, has maintained an interest in Willimantic since it first visited in April.

“I still continue to talk with (Common Ground) and meet with them to talk about potential possibilities,” Paulhus said.

Michael Skrebutenas, who works for Common Ground exporting its ideas to other towns, said the organization is “very interested in the hotel,” although it has not approached hotel owner Robert Riquier since April.

“Ninety-nine percent of our dealings have been with town officials,” Skrebutenas said of the hotel, valued at $466,130 by the town assessor’s office.

When Common Ground first expressed an interest in branching out into Willimantic, they also talked about other properties. Those included the former YMCA building and the Nathan Hale building, all on Main Street. But, their current interest is “first and foremost, the Hotel Hooker,” Skrebutenas said.

Common Ground’s work has included the rehabilitation and transformation of The Times Square, a New York City hotel located at the corner of 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.

Common Ground Community held a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the opening of its third Ben & Jerry’s PartnerShop recently. The 2,000 square-foot storefront, located on the southwest corner of 104 th Street and Broadway, is situated on t6he ground floor of what was once the Regent Resident Hotel.

Leased from the city through NYC’s Economic Development Corporation, the PartnerShop will employ residents from the Volunteers of America’s Regent Family Shelter Employment Program. Managed by the Volunteers of America, the Regent Family Shelter is a transitional residence for homeless families.
Ben & Jerry’s donated the franchise to Common Ground’s PartnerShop will occupy approximately 1,000 square feet of the southwest corner of the building. Common Ground has sublease the remaining space to Hot & Crusty.

Award presented at the Global World Habitat Day celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

October 7, 2003, New York – Common Ground Community’s supportive housing residence The Prince George is the recipient of the 2002 World Habitat Award. The award was presented to Rosanne Haggerty, president and founder of Common Ground and Tony Hannigan, executive director of The Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS) during the World Habitat Day celebrations at the Palacio da Cidade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The event was hosted by the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro in the presence of H.E. President of Brazil.

The World Habitat Awards were established in 1985 by the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) as part of its contribution to the United Nations International Year of Shelter for the Homeless. These awards are given annually to human settlements projects that provide practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and problems, in both developed and developing countries and which are capable of replication.

“We are deeply honored to be the recipient of this year’s award,” said Ms. Haggerty. “The Prince George exemplifies the caliber of housing that can be achieved when innovation, historical and environmental preservation and community integration meet. “

The Prince George provides 416 units of permanent affordable supportive housing for low-income, special needs and previously homeless single adults, including those living with HIV/AIDS, those with mental illness and the elderly. In partnership with CUCS, Common Ground offers a network of services for Prince George tenants designed both to foster community and to promote independence. To that end, CUCS provides a full-range of on-site social services, including case management, vocational training and job placement services, medical and psychiatric services, and referrals to community agencies. In collaboration with Common Ground’s tenant services staff, building-wide and community activities are developed.

“Many of the programs developed in the name of helping the homeless are small, at least compared to the size of the problem,” Hannigan said. “The Prince George proves that we can provide housing and services on a bigger scale.”

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, The Prince George is a 14-story structure located on East 28th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. The building, originally completed in 1904 and expanded in 1912, was designed as an elegant hotel for moderate-income tourists. Due to changes in the commercial real estate market, The Prince George fell into disrepair and during the 1980’s served as one of the City’s most notorious welfare hotels, housing at one point hundreds of homeless women and children in an atmosphere of crime and despair. Common Ground purchased The Prince George in 1996 after a long period of abandonment and began an extensive rehabilitation to transform this landmark into permanent housing for formerly homeless and low-income single adults. Renovations included the gut rehabilitation of rooms and restoration of the historic features of the building, including the façade, lobby, marble mosaic floors, ceiling murals and renaissance ornamentation. The project was completed in October 1999.

Several organizations and corporations partnered with Common Ground to make The Prince George possible, including the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, the NYS Homeless Housing Assistance Program, the NYS Office of Mental Health and investors JP Morgan Chase Bank and Fannie Mae, all of whom provided capital funding; MetLife, Deutsche Bank Americas, JP Morgan Chase Bank and the Corporation for Supportive Housing provided bridge financing. The NYC HRA, Division of AIDS Services and Income Support, NYC Department of Homeless Services SRO Support Subsidy Program, NYS Office of Mental Health, NYC Department of Mental Health, US Department of Housing & Urban Development Supportive Housing Program and SRO Moderate Rehabilitation Rental Assistance Program provided operating support subsidies. The development team included architects Beyer Blinder Belle, and historic preservation consultants Higgins and Quasebarth.

For more information on The World Habitat Awards please go to www.bshf.org.

Common Ground Community is a non-profit housing and community development organization whose mission is to end homelessness through innovative programs that transform people, buildings and communities.

# # #

Common Ground recently received a remarkable gift from the Hollander Charitable Trust: the deed to 410 Asylum St. and the opportunity to transform this long-neglected property into a building that will contribute to the revitalization of downtown Hartford.

Successful communities are composed of a diversity of building types, uses and people. Common Ground has put this diversity principle to use in a series of successful transformations of historic buildings over the course of our 13-year history. We have created more than 1,300 apartments in New York City and demonstrated that individual buildings can contribute to meeting a range of community needs.

Hartford, like so many cities, struggles with the challenges of creating an economically vital center city; with attracting investment; with job creation; with creating a 24-hour residential community to support a broad business base; with finding viable uses for historic buildings; with providing affordable housing for working people; and with finding genuine solutions that offer the homeless a way back to stable and purposeful lives.

Initiatives that respond to all these demands in single projects are what cities need.

Common Ground’s plan for 410 Asylum St. represents such a multi-layered response to many of Hartford’s dilemmas and downtown development goals.

In what has been an empty office building for seven years, we plan a full historic restoration that will create a 120-unit mixed-use, mixed-income rental apartment building with ground floor retail space.

The city’s Greenberg plan calls for this use. What’s equally significant, though, is who will live there. Half of the apartments - all of them efficiency style - will be rented to working individuals earning less than $27,960 per year. They are people who work in the city’s hotels and schools, artists, office workers and those in service and entry level jobs who struggle to secure safe and affordable housing. The other 60 apartments will be for those selected from Hartford’s overflowing shelters - people who show the strongest motivation to get back on their feet, re-enter the workforce and make good use of a second chance.

Funding for the project available through a combination of sources, particularly the low-income and historic rehabilitation tax credit programs, will enable us to bring new investment capital to Hartford.

Can this be done?

Thirteen years ago when Common Ground began its first project, the restoration of the crumbling Times Square Hotel at 43rd Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, that neighborhood was a symbol of urban blight. Crime, decaying buildings and the absence of legitimate retail businesses or a residential community characterized the area.

Collaborating with the newly formed Times Square Business Improvement District and with government officials overseeing redevelopment plans for the 42nd Street area, Common Ground converted the hotel into permanent housing for the homeless and low-income workers and thus became part of a stunning urban success story.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Some 652 affordable efficiency apartments were created for an equal number of homeless adults and lower-income working people. The ground floor attracted retail tenants such as Ben & Jerry’s and Starbucks, which hired tenants returning to the workforce. Social service agencies worked with us to provide residents with the assistance they needed to become and remain responsible, financially self-sufficient tenants and neighbors. Nearby businesses offered jobs to our formerly homeless tenants, and referred their employees to us for safe and affordable housing.

Times Square is now a thriving business and tourist district. Our building is surrounded by new market rate housing, a recently opened Westin Hotel and some of the most expensive commercial real estate in the world.

Our longtime neighbors take pride in the area’s inclusiveness, as well as its new prosperity, and that a mixed-income apartment building helped establish the momentum that so dramatically improved our community. We’re told that newcomers to the neighborhood, or those who know our building by its appearance alone, are convinced that it’s an exclusive hotel or market-rate housing.

What makes our buildings, all of which serve the homeless and low-income people, such exceptional contributors to neighborhood redevelopment is our commitment to good design; a thoughtful approach to tenant selection; appropriate support services; and strong on-site property management to tie everything together and ensure quality and accountability.

Our success rests, as well, on recognizing the important tradition of providing affordable housing for single people in downtown communities.

When I was growing up in West Hartford, my family became friendly with many of the residents of downtown hotels who, like us, attended Sunday Mass at St. Patrick and St. Anthony’s at Church and Ann streets. In times of prosperity and decline, residential hotels like The Hartford, The Garde, The Thomas Hooker and many smaller rooming houses were a quiet but essential part of the downtown fabric, offering modest accommodations to low-wage workers and those on fixed incomes.

Spurred by urban renewal and other forces, most of these buildings were demolished by the end of the 1980s. In Hartford and other cities, the implications of the loss of residential hotels weren’t recognized at the time. Not until more and more single people with limited incomes became homeless did the importance of such housing become clear.

Common Ground and other organizations have revived the concept of affordable housing designed for single people, while adding the services and attentive management that was often missing in the old commercial hotels. This has proved to be an effective answer to homelessness - permanent, cost effective and respectful of individuals and communities.

Yet it is not yet widely known that such a practical solution exists, and that such buildings have contributed so importantly to urban redevelopment efforts.

Common Ground’s plan for 410 Asylum St. addresses several of the city’s needs in one project in a way designed to complement other downtown development efforts. It offers a proven strategy. Our organization’s record of success will help create the vital and inclusive downtown community Hartford aspires to have.

Rosanne Haggerty is president and founder of Common Ground, a nonprofit organization in New York City.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant