Hope Street Development Group and Aedis Real Estate Group have teamed up with downtown-based KTGY Architecture + Planning to create modular apartment buildings for the homeless.
Earier this month, the team opened the four-story Hope on Broadway at 5138 S. Broadway St., which includes 49 residential units on a quarter-acre lot in a transit-oriented community.
As with a previous Hope Street development and two more pending—all constructed by Hoffman Management and Construction Corp. —the ground-floor podium-style building offers supporting services, and resident amenities include an interior courtyard and roof deck.
The monochrome color palette emphasizes the structural texture of the construction material with additional texture coming from a perforated steel entry canopy and sun shading. Large expanses of glass allow sunlight into the residential units.
“With this series of apartment buildings, Hope Street Development team continues to refine its unique technology with the potential to transform modular housing,” KTGY associate principal Mark Oberholzer said in a statement. “Site work and foundations are done on site, while the modules — including customized interior finishes and fittings — are manufactured off-site and craned into place. As the housing crisis continues, these projects are efficiently delivering new residences and services to people very much in need.”
Hope on Broadway joins the recently opened Hope on Alvarado in the MacArthur Park/Westlake neighborhood, in which formerly homeless individuals are now living. Hope on Alvarado is a five-story building comprised of 84 studio and one-bedroom apartments ranging from 400 to 800 square feet.
The 98-unit Hope on Hyde Park on Crenshaw Boulevard in Hyde Park District will open this month. A fourth Hope Street Development, Hope on Avalon, located across from Magic Johnson Park in Willowbrook, is under construction.
That project will provide 89 units of permanent supportive and traditional housing, ranging from 320 to 480 square feet, above parking for 12 vehicles. Hope on Avalon will be completed in May.
Both Hope on Broadway and Hope on Hyde Park have received City of Los Angeles Measure HHH funding from the $1.2-billion bond measure passed by Los Angeles voters in 2016 to build approximately 10,000 units of supportive housing.
The Hope projects may be the largest modular housing series in Los Angeles, according to the developer behind the projects — Scott Baldridge, president of Aedis Real Estate Group and a partner on Hope Street Development Group.
“We designed a new method with the county that acted like a project-based voucher-type of agreement but was the first of its kind,” Baldridge said. “It took me a lot of time talking to lenders and investors to convince them the value of it. We did our first project Hope on Alvarado utilizing that rental subsidy agreement, and it’s now become standard in Los Angeles County.”
Baldridge made the tenancy simple for the homeless people who take shelter at a Hope complex.
“When they move into our building, there’s no expiration date,” Baldridge said. “They can live there as long as they want. We do have case workers at the building that we have to accommodate for. The only way to make this work is with those wrap-around services.”
Oberholzer called the Hope Street projects exhilarating.
“Hope Street Development is looking at innovations on a whole bunch of levels,” he said. “In financing, innovative construction angle, and project delivery.”
Baldridge noted that the efficiency comes from two separate teams of building — at the construction site and making modules at the factory — happening simultaneously.The completed modules are then transported to the construction site and maneuvered into place.
