Home Sweet Home -- Avenue CDC Organization Builds Affordable
Housing and Community Spirit

By Molly Glentzer

This article originally appeared in the February 2003 issue of Houston House and Home and is reprinted with the magazine's permission.

Architect Bob Robinowitz has designed trendy lofts, trophy homes and multi-million dollar commercial properties, but few of those endeavors are as meaningful as the four simple bungalows he and business partner Mike McIntyre created last year in a ramshackle inner-city neighborhood.

The cheery homes–with identical floor plans but varying exterior colors and rooflines–are at the corner of Gano and Amundsen Streets in a neighborhood called Near Northside. Situated opposite a seafood distributor and within view of Union Pacific railroad tracks, they stand out like beacons of hope amid other, rundown houses in the area.

The homes were built by Avenue Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization that’s working to preserve cultural and economic diversity in threatened communities along Washington Avenue and on the Near Northside. One of its major thrusts is helping low income; working families become homeowners–preventing their displacement from rising rents and enabling them to build wealth through home equity.

"People who own homes have more of an investment in the community. They’re more likely to keep up their homes and be aware of crime. They help to stabilize the community and improve it," says Avenue CDC executive director Mary Lawler.

"As you go into a neighborhood like this, it starts to have a domino effect," Robinowitz says. "It really becomes a catalyst; the neighbors begin to paint and clean up their properties, too."

Houston has a citywide shortage of affordable housing, and it’s especially acute in the inner city. In 1970, 53 percent of all Houstonians owned their homes. Now the figure has dropped to 46 percent, well below the national average of 66 percent—and it’s only 42 percent in Avenue CDC’s target areas.

Avenue CDC’s homes average $70,909. And their buyers— typically small families living on salaries of $20,000 to $45,000—usually receive subsidies of $16,000 or more.

The simple bungalow model–with bedrooms down one side and living/dining and kitchen down the other–offered McIntyre & Robinowitz an efficient design platform and also added nostalgic value.

"Our biggest challenge was keeping the cost of the project down without sacrificing quality, durability and individuality," Robinowitz says. "There were two things on the table from the beginning: wood floors and 9-foot ceilings. Both cost a little more, but we felt they were important, so we found other ways to simplify." The ceiling height adds a feeling of spaciousness. The nicely finished pine floors do double duty; they’re the structure’s sub-flooring.

The homes pack a lot of livability into 1,200 square feet. By keeping the living/dining floor plan open, the architects not only made it flexible and roomy, they saved money. "Less wall space means less materials," McIntyre said.

The bedrooms are a generous 11.5x12 feet. The front bedroom is accessed from the living/dining area rather than a hallway, so it’s adaptable as a home office or a guestroom.

Although there’s just one bath, it functions like two. A door separates the bathtub, toilet and a pedestal sink from a vanity area and another sink. With twin infants of his own, McIntyre made the vanity large enough for diaper changing. He had to extend the exterior framework slightly to accommodate the bathroom design, but kept it affordable by staying under the existing roofline.

The homes have a lot more storage than your average bungalow, with "bonus closets" throughout. The master bedroom even has some built-in shelving. The kitchen pantry is sizeable, and there’s a laundry area behind folding doors. While the homes have central air and heat, every room has operable, insulated glass windows and a ceiling fan.

"Bringing more natural light into the rooms is a real bonus," McIntyre says.

He and Robinowitz scrutinized every material. They chose cultured marble with a matte finish for the bathroom counters because it looks more upscale than shiny versions. Other choices had to do with durability. "A big expense of homeownership is maintenance. We wanted to keep that to a minimum," says McIntyre. He designed the front porches with a new material called Geodeck that’s glued rather than nailed down. And the exterior siding is low-maintenance Hardi-plank.

Perhaps most importantly, McIntyre & Robinowitz replatted the land so that three of the four houses wouldn’t face the commercial property and the west sun. Board member Donna Kacmar, an architect and chair of the building committee, says Avenue CDC tries to discourage homeowners from putting up fences. "We’re interested in building neighborhoods."

Nevertheless, a new privacy fence surrounded one of the homes when we visited last fall. Next door, the only home still unsold had been hit by thieves. They broke a window and took a ceiling fan and the kitchen stove, leaving a scratched trail where they’d dragged it along the pine floor. Avenue CDC has had projects set on fire, too—a hazard of working in tough neighborhoods.

The organization relies on gifts from private foundations (the Houston Endowment and the Sisters of Charity are among its benefactors), works with government programs such as Fannie Mae and raises funds through special events and its home sales and rentals.

To develop affordable housing and preserve the neighborhood’s historic architecture, Sixth Ward residents founded avenue CDC in 1991.

One of its earliest projects was renovating two historic homes there for low-income buyers. But skyrocketing property values soon forced Avenue CDC to expand its boundaries.

Avenue CDC has saved 27 homes from demolition, either by moving them or renovating them in place. They’re tax-deductible donations, based on each home’s appraised value. Avenue CDC does all the work, getting permits, and hiring the house mover. They only recently began building new homes because the supply of old homes from Montrose and the West End has dwindled.

"It’s bittersweet for us," Lawler says, "although there will always be rehabs in place, and there’s still opportunity in the Near Northside."

"The danger is that values go up, and at some point you can no longer afford to do affordable housing," says Robinowitz. And Avenue CDC can’t control the rising property taxes that push low-income homeowners out of the market. (Its free education programs do, however, teach them how to protest their taxes.)

And there will always be people who can’t afford to buy. That’s why Avenue CDC also has rental-housing programs. It developed the Washington Courtyards apartment complex close to downtown to serve mixed-income residents. Rental rates are based on income, and some are market priced.

Lawler says the complex has been nearly completely occupied since it opened in 2000. "This community has historically been diverse, and the organization wants to help keep it this way.

By this April, Avenue CDC expects to open Oak Arbor Town homes, a 94-unit complex on the Northside. And they’re raising funds to turn the historic Jefferson Davis Hospital on Dart Street into lofts for low-income artists.

"There’s a lot of excitement about the project in the artists'community and the community at large," Lawler says. "The building is a big part of the history of the neighborhood, and we’ll be making it an asset as opposed to a blight, which it has been for the last 20 years."

For more information, call Avenue CDC at 713-864-8099 or visit http://www.avenuecdc.org.

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