Southeast Archives

Charlotte Mecklenburg Housing and Homelessness Strategic Framework Implementation Plan

November 20, 2024 / Comments Off

HR&A worked with United Way to develop an implementation plan for their initial strategic framework for a continuum of issues related to affordable housing and homelessness in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. HR&A conducted extensive stakeholder outreach and analysis to create actionable and innovative strategies to reduce housing instability and homelessness across the region.

In addition to our extensive stakeholder outreach to understand the current institutional and programmatic landscape of homelessness and housing insecurity across the county, HR&A conducted an ecosystem scan of housing and homelessness services. This assessment not only identified gaps but also estimated the costs of filling the gaps. HR&A confirmed the findings through engagement with a broad technical committee that was made up of service providers, policy makers, affordable housing developers, and individuals with lived experience.

HR&A developed a detailed set of actionable and innovative implementation targets and a funding approach that supports the plan’s three main priorities: Person-Directed Care, Prevention, and Housing Supply. Person-Directed Care will help overcome a currently fragmented system of service provision that makes it difficult for people to connect to critical services. Prevention will build on highly successful existing programs to create a robust prevention system that helps people stay in their homes and avoid experiencing homelessness. Expanding the supply of affordable housing units will make all types of housing units — from shelter beds to single-family homes for sale — available to people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. To move forward on these priorities, the plan calls for a new coalition of public, private, and nonprofit organizations to coordinate action and shift the broader policy environment.

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Read the Housing and Homelessness Strategic Framework Implementation Plan

Learn more about the the plan

Amazon Housing Equity Fund

November 20, 2024 / Comments Off

HR&A is supporting program design and implementation for Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, a $2 billion commitment to preserve existing housing and create inclusive housing developments through below-market loans and grants to developers, public agencies, and minority-led organizations. HR&A led negotiation and underwriting efforts for over 9,000 new affordable homes in the Washington DC area and will continue to support Amazon with their additional commitment of $1.4 billion.

HR&A Advisors has been working with Amazon since 2020 to help develop and implement the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, which was founded to help increase affordable housing opportunities in locations where Amazon has a significant presence. In cities like Washington D.C., Nashville, Austin, and Seattle, among others, we have helped Amazon address affordable housing shortages via subsidized loans, grants, and partnerships with local governments and nonprofits. Since helping design and then launch the program in January 2021, we have supported Amazon’s efforts to preserve 21,000+ homes and have underwritten and closed over $1B in housing transactions for the public sector and impact investors. A key tenant of the AHEF is also to provide access to capital for minority-led developers, resulting in 62% of these transactions supporting BIPOC-led developers. 

To develop a large-scale portfolio investment strategy for housing affordability, HR&A created an affordable housing finance summary of potential investment strategies, conducted a landscape analysis of peer investments in housing, worked with Amazon to refine investment goals and priorities, and developed a clear and concise financial framework to evaluate potential investment options. HR&A conducted an initial market scan in target geographies, assessed the housing need in those geographies to evaluate programmatic components, and conducted high-level financial analysis to test investment portfolio scenarios.

After the first phase leveraging Amazon’s initial $2 billion investment to preserve 21,000+ homes and positively impact 46,000+ residents, Amazon committed an additional $1.4 billion for a second phase.

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Check out the Amazon Housing Equity Fund’s website

Learn about Amazon’s second round of $1.4 billion in funding

2024 Amazon Housing Equity Fund Impact Report

Press

Q&A with Senthil Sankaran, Managing Principal, Amazon Housing Equity Fund — UrbanLand Magazine

Amazon Promised to Deliver Affordable Housing. How’s It Doing? — Bloomberg

Everything you need to know about Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund—a $3.6 billion commitment to help people access affordable housing — Amazon

Op-Ed: A Simple Housing Fix for Wake County —  INDYweek

Florida Apartment Association Housing Scarcity Dashboard

November 20, 2024 / Comments Off

HR&A developed an interactive dashboard for the Florida Apartment Association to track Florida’s rapidly growing housing needs at the county and metro-area level and showcases cost drivers and benefits of incentive tools to highlight housing gaps for lower-income renters.

Visualizing the housing landscape across a state can be difficult — there are many factors that shape the housing ecosystem, and many are highly technical and often challenging to understand. The Housing Scarcity Dashboard helps demystify the technical factors that shape the housing landscape across Florida by integrating data and estimates from the Census Bureau, the Florida Office of Economic & Demographic Research, and other sources of high-quality demographic and real estate information into an easy-to-understand interactive heat maps and graphics.

In addition to current housing needs across income brackets, the tool also displays the projected future housing supply gap, emphasizing the detrimental ongoing impacts — especially for lower-income renters — that statewide housing shortages will have if left unchecked.

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Explore the Dashboard

Press

Florida Apartment Association launches website detailing housing scarcity across Florida — Florida Politics

Charlottesville Affordable Housing Plan

November 19, 2024 / Comments Off

HR&A developed an Affordable Housing Plan for the City of Charlottesville that centers racial equity and regional collaboration to guide the city’s investments in affordable housing programs and policies. Charlottesville has made significant progress on the Plan’s three major initiatives including: dedicating $10M a year to affordable housing, building inclusive governance throughout the City’s housing ecosystem, and adopting progressive, inclusionary zoning reforms — all of which are shaping a denser, more economically diverse Charlottesville.

As part of the planning process, we worked with multiple stakeholder groups to understand the existing affordable housing landscape in Charlottesville — assessing existing challenges and building consensus around proposed solutions. With this input, the HR&A team developed a robust Affordable Housing Plan that included actionable solutions stakeholders were already invested in. The City approved the plan in March 2021, and our work informed related efforts to update the City’s comprehensive plan and zoning code.

Following the Affordable Housing Plan’s adoption, we continued working with the City and the planning team to evaluate the feasibility of a new inclusionary zoning policy. The team used a series of financial models based on Charlottesville’s existing market conditions and land use plans to determine the feasibility of requiring affordable housing production as a percentage of all new housing development by offering density bonuses or other incentives. We tested various scenarios for incentives and affordability requirements as well as multiple development types.

The team also reviewed the Future Land Use Map’s requirements and established market and development assumptions to evaluate the rate of change of the policy’s impact on property value and new housing production. The final recommendations of the study were implemented into Charlottesville’s new Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) Policy, which was unanimously approved by the City Council in December 2023.

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Read the Plan

Press

“It’s finally here: Charlottesville has a new zoning ordinance”— Charlottesville Tomorrow

Wake County Affordable Housing Plan & Implementation

April 10, 2019 / Comments Off

Developed a long-term Affordable Housing Plan; now supporting implementation and program creation.

Challenge

Wake County is the second-fastest-growing county in America and faces a growing housing crisis. Wake County sought to identify strategies that would help preserve existing affordable housing while also incentivizing the production of new affordable housing. As the level of federal support for affordable housing programs continues to decrease, Wake County needed unique strategies to solve challenges ensuring long-term affordability of housing within the county.

Solution

HR&A reviewed existing affordable housing programs and policies, analyzed demographic and market conditions, performed a housing gap analysis, and conducted a financial feasibility analysis for affordable housing development. As part of the development of the Affordable Housing Plan, HR&A ran an extensive stakeholder engagement process that included a 35-member steering committee of local stakeholders representing different communities in Wake County. The plan provided Wake County an actionable roadmap to guide their affordable housing efforts over the next 20 years.

IMPACT

Following the launch of the long-term Affordable Housing Plan, Wake County retained HR&A to support the implementation of the Plan’s recommendations. HR&A’s efforts are concentrated on three primary tasks: the development of a gap financing program to support new multifamily affordable housing projects, including revising the County’s current selection criteria for its existing rental production loan program and supporting County staff in the review of project applications; the assessment of capacity of select sites to accommodate permanent supportive housing development; and the development of a land disposition policy to guide the use and sale of County-owned properties in support of affordable housing, including analyzing legal restrictions and developing feasibility criteria to prioritize parcels suited for direct development of on-site units.

District of Columbia Housing Authority Headquarters

April 10, 2019 / Comments Off

Leveraging DCHA assets to produce new mixed-income housing and administrative facilities.

Challenge

Like many housing agencies across the country, the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA) is faced with an inventory of aging/obsolete public housing inventory that is in need of significant capital investment or redevelopment. Additionally, as the agency seeks to address these challenges DCHA seeks to create more balanced mixed-income communities without displacing of existing residents. In an era of decreasing Federal support for public housing, the agency must achieve these goals by leveraging its assets and limited funding to the greatest extent possible.

Solution

Since 2012, HR&A has provided strategic planning assistance, transaction support services, and real estate advisory for key projects throughout DCHA’s portfolio. HR&A is providing transaction support services for the redevelopment/replacement of DCHA’s headquarters into a vibrant, mixed-use project that retains the headquarters on site while adding over 900 units of mixed-income housing in the air-rights above the headquarters space. HR&A prepared solicitation documents, evaluated prospective development partners, aided in the selection of a development partners.

IMPACT

HR&A continues to serve as owner’s representative to advance negotiations between the selected development partner and DCHA, and groundbreaking is anticipated in mid- to late-2019.

Creating a Racial Equity Agenda for the United States Conference of Mayors

August 27, 2018 / Comments Off

The United States Conference of Mayors developed a comprehensive understanding of the programs, policies, and projects that are effectively advancing racial equity across the country.

CHALLENGE

Across the country, discriminatory policies and practices have created lasting disparities in social and economic outcomes across races. To work against this harmful legacy, the United States Conference of Mayors, with its strong tradition of leadership on issues of civil rights and social justice, is using its national platform to help mayors and cities understand and implement the policies and practices that can reduce racial inequities in cities.

The organization engaged HR&A to survey existing racial equity programs in cities and create a set of recommendations for how it could help member cities proactively make meaningful change in their policies and practices.

Solution

To understand their most pressing challenges, we interviewed mayors and staff from 13 cities. The collective feedback showed that some cities are incorporating racial equity through place-based initiatives, programmatic initiatives, and policy change. Additionally, cities are seeking help from external partners to directly address race in their communities. We learned the importance of mayoral leadership and that clear definitions of equity are needed to translate commitments into practice. Synthesizing our findings, we outlined the ways that the U.S. Conference of Mayors could serve as an important convener for mayors and a source of best practice and technical assistance.

Our deepest insight emerged from our conversations with economic development departments. Unlike many social services, these functions are siloed from conversations on racial disparity even though they are charged with decisions that impact the physical, demographic, and economic realities of communities. This insight helped us design a program that would connect these departments with training, resources, and technical assistance to embed equity into daily practice.

READ THE BRIEF

Innovation District Roadmap for the University of Georgia

August 24, 2018 / Comments Off

The University of Georgia created a roadmap to focus the development goals, priorities, and feasibility of a future innovation district.

CHALLENGE

The University of Georgia, one of the country’s oldest public universities, is quickly becoming a premiere destination for higher-education. Seeking to further strengthen its position as a one of the top 20 public universities in the country, the university is creating a research campus to host its research and innovation activities. To understand the process and resources needed to create a research campus, the university’s real estate team hired HR&A to evaluate the operational and financial feasibility of such a project.

Solution

HR&A assessed the university’s innovation, technology, and research strengths and weaknesses through stakeholder interviews and a review of innovation districts and research centers at peer universities. Working collaboratively with a real estate task force, HR&A and the university used its extensive understanding of university processes, innovation ecosystems, and implementation strategies to create development guidelines for a financially sustainable innovation district. These guidelines identified strategies to develop through private sector partnerships, grow university research opportunities, and produce a convergent environment unique to the University of Georgia.

Impact

HR&A’s recommendations focused the task force’s future development of the district on the development of a convergent innovation center that would include space for productive uses open to for entrepreneurs, community members, and students. The convergent innovation center will be activated and programmed by a variety of university programs and activities that focus on economic development, industry partnerships, and entrepreneurship.

Revenue and Ridership Analysis of Commuter Parking & Transit-Oriented Development

August 23, 2018 / Comments Off

With HR&A’s parking and ridership forecast model, MARTA can confidently evaluate the financial implications of providing free commuter parking and transit-oriented development.

CHALLENGE

$2.8 billion in new transit funding, rapid regional growth, and an unexpected spike in ridership – due to the emergency closure of a major transportation artery – compelled MARTA to evaluate and identify the appropriate level of commuter parking capacity along its rail system. Station parking, which is free for commuters, represents a significant cost to MARTA, and replacement requirements for existing parking reduce the financial feasibility of building transit-oriented developments at stations – which could bring new riders and revenue to the system.

To better understand the appropriate balance between providing enough parking to meet demand and creating new transit-oriented development opportunities at stations, MARTA engaged HR&A to create a flexible modeling tool that allows the agency to evaluate the financial and ridership implications of supporting different levels of parking and transit-oriented development at each station.

Solution

HR&A developed a model to forecast the changes in demand for parking through 2040 at five MARTA stations. This model relied on regression analysis to identify the relationship between parking demand and observable conditions, then used regional transit planning growth projections to forecast demand. Working with transportation consultants Fehr & Peers, the team created a flexible, user-friendly evaluation tool from the model, which details the impact of transit-oriented development and parking scenarios on anticipated MARTA revenue and ridership.

Impact

HR&A is now working with MARTA to expand the tool to the remaining 18 stations with parking facilities in the rail system. In addition, MARTA anticipates using the tool to support its negotiations with a development partner for the second phase of the Edgewood-Candler Station transit-oriented development project and future transit-oriented projects. The tool will help inform the optimal level of replacement parking required of the developer.

Joint Development Program and Affordable Housing Policy Analysis

July 13, 2018 / Comments Off

By assessing its existing programs, MARTA gained new insight on strategies to improve the effectiveness of its transit-oriented development programs and affordable housing policies.

CHALLENGE

Five years after adopting new guidelines to frame its approach to transit-oriented development, MARTA’s board of directors sought to assess the program’s effectiveness in promoting dense, mixed-use development with a great public realm, and to identify areas for improvement. Additionally, the board required a more precise understanding of how the agency’s affordable housing policy affected the viability of joint development deals, and how to attract a larger pool of national developers to its joint development solicitations.

Solution

To understand the baseline performance of MARTA’s programs, HR&A reviewed regional and local development trends and plans, identified the performance and pain points of the agency’s existing joint development, and benchmarked the agency’s TOD and affordable housing programs with peer city agencies. HR&A also analyzed MARTA’s property portfolio for future TOD potential, giving MARTA the ability to prioritize appropriate stations for pre-solicitation market studies, feasibility analyses, and community visioning.

HR&A recommended the agency establish an independent contracting and procurement authority for MARTA’s real estate office, which would simplify the solicitation program and enable the real estate office to work at the pace of private development partners. To unlock more creative funding sources for affordable housing and build support community revitalization goals, HR&A recommended the agency strengthen partnerships with regional housing and economic development organizations and local municipal development partners.

Impact

MARTA demonstrated that its TOD program performs on par with peer agencies and identified actions to improve effectiveness. MARTA anticipates it will attract a greater pool of national development partners and improve development partnerships and outcomes.