5) Description of housing product/service offering: For decades, the lodging houses located in the Bowery neighborhood of lower Manhattan provided inexpensive housing for men unwilling or unable to access more conventional permanent housing. Indeed, cities around the globe have similar housing: cubicle hotels, rooming houses, single room occupancies (SROs), flophouses, workers’ dorms. In New York, and elsewhere, the steady loss of this type of housing correlates to the burgeoning of street homeless in recent decades. Legal SROs have declined in New York City, for example, from as many as 200,000 in the late 1950s to 40,000 currently. This decline has stemmed from the rising property values and resulting conversions of these properties into higher end housing and tourist accommodations. In some cities, including New York, the modernization of building and fire codes had the unintended effect of stimulating the closure of these buildings without replacement forms of housing created to take their place. However, for adults living on the streets, this type of lodging – cheap, anonymous, safe – is a lifeline. Common Ground Community’s First Step Initiative marries the ongoing need and demand for the lodging house with innovative design to offer private safe, clean, inexpensive short-term accommodations and social services to chronically street homeless single adults.

6) Description of innovation: In 2002, Common Ground purchased the Andrews, a deteriorating lodging house on the Bowery. Built in 1900, the building contained 213 cubicles of no more than 33 SF each. Common Ground saw the cramped, unsafe, unimproved building as a chance to reinvent lodging-house single room occupancy housing. When the rehabilitation of the Andrews is complete in Spring 2007, the site will offer 146 short- term living units that will rent for only $7 per night, as well as on-site services to address the mental and physical health of an extremely vulnerable resident population.

The development of First Step Housing took a fresh look at four aspects of housing for the homeless: the target population; research and customer participation; design; and the provision of services.

The Population: A Focus on the Chronic Homeless: Supportive housing is increasingly recognized throughout the world as providing the most successful and cost effective response to homelessness for those with housing and ongoing support needs. However, many supportive housing projects are not equipped or oriented to address the needs of the most daunting population – the chronic homeless. These are struggling veterans, former day laborers, addicts, ex-prisoners, and other individuals who for years have called the street or shelters their home. They have minimal access to the basic resources – benefits, health care, social networks – that could link them to sustainable housing and employment. Many are also distrustful of accepting services. Yet through its targeted street outreach efforts concentrated on the densest area of street homelessness in New York City -- midtown, Manhattan -- Common Ground has developed methods to reach this high need group and move them from the streets into homes.

Direct Research and Customer Participation: The causes of homelessness and the barriers to housing people on the streets have long been the subject of policy and academic inquiry. However, Common Ground’s approach has been directly to seek out long-term homeless people to enquire about their housing preferences. We went to soup kitchens, shelters, missions, outreach centers and street corners to ask this group of unserved potential housing consumers about their basic housing requirements, how much they had to spend, and what rules, amenities and services they would like to be able to purchase. In over 200 surveys, each involving an extensive conversation, a clear pattern emerged. Privacy, security, affordability and space for personal belongings were the most significant factors that would motivate these chronically homeless individuals to take their first steps out of homelessness. Out of these conversations, the vision for a new type of lodging house took shape. Subsequent focus groups of long term homeless people advises in the development of unit design and program operating parameters.

The First Step Unit: Upon completion, the renovated Andrews will contain 146 innovatively designed modular housing units as well as common areas on floors two through nine. The First Step units will provide a more spacious and architecturally refined version of the historic cubicle concept – in essence creating comfortable living spaces to replace the small, crowded and dark units of the past. The units will be lockable, and each will contain a bed, workspace and storage area. [See attached images.]

In partnership with The Architectural League of New York, Common Ground held an open design competition for this new form of accommodation. Competitors were asked to design a prototypical individualized dwelling unit and show how 19 such units could be organized on a typical floor of The Andrews. The current residents of The Andrews -46 elderly men who have lived in the building from 10 to 20 years- participated in the selection of the prototypes. A jury of prominent design professionals also took part. Criteria also included compliance with building code and fire safety standards and a modest construction budget. Two selected unit designs are now under construction and will be installed as building systems work is completed in early 2007. In New York, where a studio unit of affordable housing can cost as much as $80,000 to construct, each First Step unit will cost approximately $5,000 to build.

Home, Health and Wellness Clinic (HHW): The homeless surveyed also expressed interest in services, particularly health care services, so long as they were not mandated. Thus Common Ground developed the Home Health and Wellness program (HHW), based at The Andrews to provide primary health care services for Andrews residents as well as homeless and marginally housed individuals throughout the Bowery area. The goal of HHW is to ensure that these medically frail individuals receive high quality, comprehensive health care services to address severe and untreated medical and mental health conditions. Clinical staff from St. Vincent’s Medical Center provide health assessments, episodic care and first aid, primary care exams, ongoing care and monitoring of chronic conditions, patient education and health education groups, and screening for common condition, as well as admitting rights to a multi-service hospital when necessary. The clinic is small and personal and, since it is part of the living environment, attractive to those who have avoided health services in the past. The HHW clinic also functions as a ‘one-stop’ program facilitating access to a multi-service hospital when necessary.

7) Benefits to clients: Common Ground links to governmental and nonprofit outreach teams and drop-in centers in New York to identify those who have been homeless the longest and who will be the specific focus of The Andrews/First Step Housing program. In particular, Common Ground designed and operates the Street to Home Initiative, a collaboration of eleven outreach and service providers working in midtown, Manhattan. The Street to Home collaborative represents many years of experience working with homeless adults. Team members know the long term homeless by name. Common Ground introduced the use of a shared database to align all teams’ interactions with homeless individuals and share information such as where and how to locate specific individuals and the status of their applications for housing. Through these relationships, chronically homeless individuals will be identified and referred to The Andrews.

8) Key operational partnerships: As described above, the success of First Step Housing rests on partnerships to undertake outreach to chronic homeless, to engage and make referrals, and to provide services to address physical and mental health, substance abuse, personal care, and long-term stability. First Step Housing therefore involves collaboration and partnership with over two-dozen organizations, including federal agencies, such as the Department of Veteran Affairs, local and state agencies, such as the New York City Department of Homeless Services, hospitals and health care institutions, such as St. Vincent’s Medical Center, and nonprofit providers, such as the Bowery Residents Committee.

9) Financial model: Rents of $7 are designed to be affordable to the most marginalized populations. In addition, Common Ground works with homeless individuals to identify and access services and assistance.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 60%

          • Financing: Although extremely affordable at $7/night, rents paid by the tenants account for 60% of the expenses required to operate and maintain the building.

Funding to undertake the rehabilitation of The Andrews and to construct the new First Step Units is coming from a mix of federal, state, city and private grant sources, including (but not limited to) the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, US Department of Veterans Affairs, the NY State Homeless Housing Assistance Program, the NYC Department of Homeless Services and private contributions.

Recognizing the role of First Step Housing to help extremely vulnerable homeless adults to stabilize their lives, agencies such as the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Homeless Services are providing funding for rental subsidies and for onsite counseling services, mental and physical health care and for workers to assist residents in locating longer term housing.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: The Andrews currently has 46 men living in the building and receiving social service support.

          • Number of clients in past year: Currently, 46 men reside at the Andrews. Approximately 121 total individuals, including 30 current residents at the Andrews, have benefited from the onsite Home Health and Wellness clinic.

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 100

          • Potential demand: In a February 2006 survey, 3,843 people were found to be sleeping on New York City streets. Of these individuals, 37% (or at least 1,600) are believed to be chronically homeless, meaning they have slept outside continuously for more than a year. Common Ground’s goal is to change that. First Step is one effort to demonstrate how chronic street homelessness can be ended.

Based on these numbers of homeless individuals living on the streets or in drop-in centers, there are at least 750 individuals that could be served annually by the program at The Andrews, and likely hundreds more.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Scaling Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: Common Ground is committed to replicating the First Step model at other sites in New York and in other communities as part of its mission to end homelessness.

Common Ground is sharing the First Step Housing approach and unit prototype with housing and design activists around the globe. In the past year, Common Ground has worked with housing advocates addressing similar needs in San Francisco, Indianapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle and Minneapolis as well as cities in Japan, Australia, and Canada. Common Ground has also worked with the architects selected to design the prototypes to disseminate information through public exhibits at the Municipal Arts Society in New York, the Association for Community Design, and the Pompidou Center in Paris as well as through design publications and presentations at community design conferences. Common Ground is currently negotiating the creation of a publication on the concept with design journal “32”.

12) Origin of the initiative: As noted in the discussion on innovation, the origin of the initiative was borne out of a process of formal interviews and focus groups with people living on the streets and in shelters. To explore the possibility of creating home in a very small space, Common Ground drew inspiration from the original flophouse design, the Japanese cubicle hotel, prefabricated sheds’, train sleeping cars, beach huts and other innovative designs for compact living.

Contact Information:
LoriAnn  Girvan
Director of New Initiatives
Common Ground Community
(NGO/Nonprofit Housing Developer)
595 Eighth Avenue, 15th Floor
United States
Tel: 212-389-9355
Fax: 212-389-9312
Email: lgirvan@commonground.org
Website: www.commonground.org