Westbury redefines public housing in Portsmouth

Virginia project features new urbanist design principles and looks like another Hope VI housing program success. 6Just a few blocks from downtown and adjacent to I-264 in Portsmouth, Virginia, a new neighborhood of vibrantly colored, traditionally designed single and duplex homes is rising on a site formerly occupied by a dismal public housing project. The old public housing, Ida Barbour, had a bad reputation that depressed housing values on surrounding blocks. The new project, Westbury, is a mixture of public housing and affordable for-sale and rental properties. It is shaping up to be a successful model of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) recent philosophy of replacing public housing with mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods. Designed in 1955, Ida Barbour was the product of “urban renewal” planning and architecture ideas. The historic street and block pattern of Portsmouth was replaced with a barracks-like group of buildings. The 663 units were placed on superblocks. Streets and street connections were minimized, and buildings were set in poorly defined “open space” areas that were difficult to police and had no sense of individual ownership. “If somebody was playing dice on your doorstep, there was no way to tell that person to leave,” explains Danny Cruce, executive director of the Portsmouth Redevelopment & Housing Authority (PRHA). Poverty was concentrated — 95 percent of the households were headed by single females. The project was a center for drug activity and social problems. “It cost 10 to 20 times more to provide police and social services there than in any private neighborhood of comparable size in Portsmouth,” Cruce says. Finally, Ida Barbour was poorly maintained. Renovation was estimated to cost $40 million to $50 million, and that would not have corrected the structural planning and social problems. PRHA wanted to tear down Ida Barbour and replace it with a more diverse neighborhood as far back as 1988, Cruce says, but at the time, HUD had no program to enable that to happen. Hope VI was created in the early 1990s to do just that, but Portsmouth didn’t receive its $24.8 million grant until 1997. The processes of public input, planning, and helping residents transition into the new community took more than three years. new urbanists hired Town planning and architecture was handled by Urban Design Associates (UDA) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a leading new urbanist firm. Construction began in 2000 at Westbury. By March, 2001, 40 homes were built or under construction. The $50-million Westbury project (the Hope VI grant was matched by an equal amount of funding from local and other federal sources) includes 161 for-sale homes and 117 rental units. An additional 261 units are planned, but not funded at this point. The new neighborhood is shaping up to be radically different from the Ida Barbour project, just like Ida Barbour was a far cry from the historic neighborhood. To start with, Ida Barbour was 100 percent public housing. Westbury will consist of more than 50 percent owner-occupied, affordable and income-qualified, homes. The rental units will be split between true public housing — where almost all the costs are picked up by taxpayers — and subsidized units. The rental tenants will initially be comprised entirely of former residents of Ida Barbour, says Cruce. Whereas Ida Barbour consisted of the same building repeated over and over, Westbury will have a variety of building types and architectural styles. Ida Barbour’s buildings were foreign to the local vernacular and screamed “public housing” to passersby, but Westbury is designed to blend in with traditional patterns. Westbury will have numerous parks, and these will be designed to be well supervised by residents of surrounding houses, i.e. there will be “eyes on the street.” All of Westbury, unlike Ida Barbour, will have a clear delineation between public and private space. “There were a lot of places to hide in Ida Barbour,” Cruce says, where criminals could escape notice and capture by authorities. In Westbury, such places will be virtually nonexistent. Strong sales Sales have been brisk at Westbury — as of late February, contracts were signed on 43 or the first 62 units (sales officially began in the fall of 2000). Half of the remaining units had potential buyers, and the rest were expected to be sold out by the end of April. The 1,400 sq. ft. single homes are priced at $95,000, and the 1,100 sq. ft. duplexes at $75,000. These prices are well below the market rate, and come with the added incentive of 4.75 percent financing and a very low down payment requirement. The units would have been sold out even more quickly were it not for the income qualification — only households earning 80 percent or less of the median are eligible. Similar to former residents of Ida Barbour, nearly all of the purchasers have been African American. Like a number of other Hope VI projects, the demand for for-sale housing has exceeded projections. “We had a market study prepared, and it was basically gloom and doom,” says Cruce. “We threw it in the trash can. We felt that with the right product, the right plan, and the right prices, we could create a market that the supposed experts said did not exist. Moreover, we made a conscious decision not to give up on the design of the units, even though someone said we could only sell $40,000 to $50,000 homes here.” Westbury represents a skillful balance between affordability and attractive design. Construction costs have ranged from $55 to $60/sq. ft., according to Freda Rosso of Cornerstone Housing, the developer and supervisor of the four local builders involved in the first phase. The home sales cover the direct building costs, the builders’ profit margin, and a small amount of the infrastructure costs. However, the homes hardly look like affordable housing. They are on brick foundations raised 30 inches off the ground. The attention to traditional detail is better than almost all new housing in the entire Hampton Roads metropolitan area (Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Newport News, and other municipalities). Units have seven-foot deep front porches, many extending the entire width of the house. The windows feature simulated divided light (SDL), eschewing the sandwich muntins on typical new housing. Even though one architect designed all the units, the variety in Westbury exceeds that of a typical new subdivision. Three architectural styles are featured — Victorian, classical, and colonial revival — all based on vernacular styles from Portsmouth’s old town area. Varied roof lines, porch styles, and models — including a mixture of single homes and duplexes — further broadens the mix. Just as importantly, vinyl is not used. The houses are clad in fiber cement siding, which requires carpentry and painting. The upgrade from vinyl costs $3,800/unit, but makes a substantial difference. The colors, selected by UDA, are startling in their intensity. A yellow house is next to a teal unit, next to a powder blue unit, next to a burgundy home. Trim is painted a different color from the siding, and on some homes, notably the Victorians, the trim itself is two-tone. People see these colors and the vernacular designs from I-264, and they pull off the highway to investigate. The sales staff has had inquiries from attorneys and medical professionals. People are frequently turned away because their income is too high — this in a neighborhood where in recent years many would have avoided driving. According to Cornerstone, no buyers have complained about the homes requiring painting. One factor is that the fiber-cement siding requires much less maintenance than wood (it only has to be painted once every 13 years), and is virtually indestructible. But the main reason why no one complains is that people are so pleased with the colors. Value engineering UDA set the original specifications for the building materials, but Cornerstone and the builders subsequently went through a process of “value engineering,” according to Rosso. The builders suggested ways to cut costs. “We followed the standard of avoiding changes that would significantly alter the look of the house,” Rosso says. For example, at the top of the builders’ proposed changes was replacing the fiber cement siding and the cellular PVC windows, which also need painting, with vinyl. Builders were told that these changes were out of the question. Many changes, however, were approved. The six-inch interior trim was replaced by 4.5 inch trim, saving about $700/unit. The architectural roof shingles, designed to look like wooden shakes, were replaced by standard asphalt shingles. The specifications called for high-quality SDL windows with spacer bars between the panes of glass, but the spacer bars were eliminated to save money. Although the change means the windows look somewhat less authentic, not many buyers notice the difference, Rosso says. Immediately above the brick foundation, a piece of cedar trim was specified as water table band — a feature of traditional Portsmouth homes. The builders felt that water would collect on the edge of this trim and create problems. The solution was to use a 10-inch band of fiber cement siding along the water line, and paint this the same color as the trim. The protruding edge is eliminated, but the accent is retained. “We still get the look the architect wanted, but it is less expensive and better from a construction standpoint,” Rosso says. The specifications called for 18-inch wide shutters (half the width of the windows), attached to the window frame. Builders wanted less expensive 14-inch shutters, attached to the siding. The latter is standard builder technique, but looks obviously phony because the shutters are not in proportion to the windows, and the placement makes the shutters look pasted on the side of the house. “The architects won the argument, and after some shutters were installed, a builder looked at it and said, ‘you know, I think the architects were right,’ ” Rosso says. The search for savings extended to the landscaping, where the original plan was significantly cut back. Smaller and fewer plants were used. In some cases, costs were underestimated. The porch columns cost more than expected, as did the front steps (builders estimated that three would be required — but most of the houses ended up with five or six). Although a single car garage is optional, almost all the buyers opt for a parking pad accessible from the alley. The elimination of the garage makes the homes more affordable, and still allows for two off-street parking spaces (one behind the other). Plenty of on-street parking is available. Affordability and aesthetics Ultimately, the results are satisfying. Cruce explains that PRHA has two missions — one to provide housing for the poorest residents, and the other to “create a neighborhood that Portsmouth will be proud of, and which will be sustainable.” It was the latter goal that convinced officials to provide the foundations, porches, upgraded windows, traditional details, vibrant colors, and new urbanist planning. Westbury demonstrates that both goals — affordability and aesthetically superior design — can be achieved in the same project, Cruce says. PRHA also had a practical reason to maintain high design standards. Ida Barbour had a very bad reputation. Attractive homes were required to turn that reputation around and generate market demand. Westbury has already had a positive impact on the city, Cruce says. The site is within a few minutes walk of the downtown business district. Concurrent with the tearing down of Ida Barbour the downtown has experienced a resurgence in development and economic activity, he says. Meanwhile, Westbury is bringing more households with disposable income close to downtown. Given that far fewer public housing units will be built than were torn down, many of the former Ida Barbour residents will not live in Westbury. They were given instead a choice of Section 8 vouchers anywhere in the region, a unit in another one of PRHA’s projects, or direct cash rental assistance. If former Ida Barbour residents want to live in Westbury, they are first in line for either the purchase or rental units, Cruce says. Prospective tenants at Westbury must agree to a strict lease that allows for their eviction if they break the rules. To buy houses, former Ida Barbour residents go through intensive training in debt management and personal finance. As of March, only three of the units were purchased by former public housing residents. Cruce hopes that number will rise in the second phase. The response to Westbury has been mostly positive, but at first, people were skeptical. “There were bumps in the road with regard to public perception,” Cruce explains. “People thought that we were not going to do what we said we were going to do. They thought we would build $500,000 houses and sell them to white people.” These doubts were dispelled through an inclusive planning process, and finally through the built product, Cruce says.