Signal 4Landing Road Residence: a new model of affordable housing
According to the Bowery Mission, every night in New York, there are more than 4,000 people sleep on the street. However, this number is merely the tip of the iceberg, the total amount of the homeless population is over 63,000. Most of them sleep in the shelter, where they remain unseen from citizens.
In New York, various reasons can lead to homelessness, after all, the lack of affordable housing still plays the primary role.
As Census recorded, the usage of shelter reaches the peak over the last three years, even New York city keep providing more shelter, it is unable to solve the primary cause of homelessness that is a lack of affordable housing. There used to be a subsidy to support low-income housing, with the banishment of this subsidy, cheap housing no longer exists in NYC.
Private developers have no willingness to build housing for low-income New Yorker as they are not possible to gain any interest from it while leasing buildings as shelters are profitable.
The Bowery Residents Committee realized this problem, and make a combination of shelter and affordable housing to solve it. The apartment Landing Road in the Bronx is a model of BRC’s innovation. This build provides 200-bed homeless shelter and 135 units of studios less than 500 dollars per month. Those studios are supported by the incomes from shelters.
This model provides a safe and decent place for both homeless and low-income people. If we can take this model to scale, it will create thousands of units as affordable housing to take the place of current shabby shelters. It will not only provide benefits to homeless people but also contribute to the whole city in reducing hygiene problems caused by people who sleep on the street.
