New designs for Habitat

For most of its 22 years, Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity followed a simple yet successful business model by building one house at a time.

The local nonprofit organization has changed its strategy.

It built an entire neighborhood within a year, with each house featuring a different architectural design.

The 17-home development off Angus Road in South Richmond also is the first of several other neighborhood developments planned by Richmond Habitat.

"It's a significant shift for us," said Leisha LaRiviere, Richmond Habitat's executive director. "The neighborhood setting will allow us to meet the critical and burgeoning need for affordable housing in central Virginia."

Richmond Habitat hasn't walked away from building single-lot homes entirely.

"To ensure we have steady production and peak organizational capacity, Richmond Habitat's portfolio will always include single-site development in between more substantive neighborhood developments," LaRiviere said.

Construction on the Angus Road development began late last year, and it was finished last month in time for the neighborhood's 17 homeowners -- and their 36 children -- to celebrate Thanksgiving in their new homes.

"It was really important to move in before Thanksgiving," said Shene Banguera, one of the homeowners. "It's nice to be at home for the holidays."

She and her husband, Luis, bought one of the neighborhood's five two-story houses, and she picked out the exterior colors -- yellow, with green shutters. This is the first house the couple has owned.

Banguera said she is especially happy to own a house in a neighborhood with so many unique designs. She and her neighbors already have developed a community by working together on the construction site during the past year.

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The impetus for the strategic shift began with criticism Richmond Habitat received at a summit meeting last year.

One of the participants complained that whenever he drove through a neighborhood, he could always pick out the Habitat house by looks alone.

"Truth be told, it hurt to hear that about our house designs," LaRiviere said. "Having begun work here as a volunteer, I believe -- as do thousands of our hands-on volunteers -- that the houses we built were pleasing and were decent, safe and affordable."

With nearly 300 houses already built, Richmond Habitat is central Virginia's largest nonprofit builder and developer of detached, single-family homes for lowto moderately low-income families.

LaRiviere decided that the organization could improve its business model by moving from building single-lot homes to developing neighborhoods of varying architectural styles.

She asked Douglas Bollinger, a senior principal in the Richmond-based architectural firm of Douglas Bollinger & Associates Inc., to help Richmond Habitat create new designs and expand its portfolio of housing styles for its first neighborhood development.

Bollinger provided his services for free.

The 17 homes off Angus Road are unlikely to draw comparison to Richmond Habitat's previous styles.

Each house features a unique design, which Bollinger said is important to give homeowners a sense of individuality.

To lend the neighborhood an intimate feeling of community, Richmond Habitat installed sidewalks and matching lampposts and mailboxes.

Bollinger also focused on giving each house a front porch that was more aesthetically pleasing than porches on earlier Habitat houses.

"I tried to make them more inviting with heavier porch columns and roof cornices, along with nicer handrails and roof pitches that are a little higher," Bollinger said.

The new development complements the ranch-style houses along Angus Road leading up to Richmond Habitat's development. Most of those homes were built in the 1950s and 1960s.

"You don't have to match what's there," Bollinger said. "But you do want it to fit in with the community and be inviting."

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Living in a house whose architectural style fits into a neighborhood is important because it keeps the Habitat homeowners from feeling stigmatized as "the poor people," said Rachel Flynn, the city of Richmond's director of community development.

"People want to fit in anywhere in life, and architecture is a part of that," Flynn said. "They don't need a mansion, but they need to feel like they're a part of the neighborhood. It's about dignity."

The Richmond Habitat houses visible from Angus Road are ranchers, but each of the five houses tucked at the back of the development are two-story.

Bollinger designed two of the development's houses. He helped Richmond Habitat adapt several other designs from its previous projects for the other homes in the development.

The houses range from 1,000 square feet to 1,700 square feet and have two to five bedrooms.

In addition to improving the houses' exterior appearance, Bollinger worked with Lin Gregory, Richmond Habitat's construction services director, to increase the efficiency of the interior plans. Improvements included larger bedrooms and bathrooms and a more open floor plan.

Volunteers provide much of the construction labor for Habitat projects, and the Angus Road development drew 45 donor partners and 6,800 volunteers.

As required by Richmond Habitat, each of the 17 families slated to move into the finished houses contributed 350 hours of sweat equity on the project as well.

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Richmond Habitat is taking the lessons it learned from its project off Angus Road and applying them to other multi-family neighborhoods.

The group has seven developments in the planning stages.

The next project is the Pillars at Oakmont, which will feature 15 townhomes planned for T Street and 33rd Street in Richmond's East End near Armstrong High School. Construction should begin by February.

That development represents the organization's first foray into building attached residential units.

"It's a more traditional design appropriate for Church Hill," Flynn said. "Richmond Habitat did all the right things in the design: The townhouses are up close against the street so they're part of the neighborhood, and the garages are in back -- the traditional way to build."

Richmond Habitat will expand the income brackets to create more diverse, mixed-income communities. The change came from feedback it received at last year's summit meeting.

The organization currently works with individuals making 30 percent to 60 percent of the area median income.

But at the Pillars at Oakmont development, Richmond Habitat will offer:

That 35-home neighborhood on Dale Avenue in South Richmond will include a 28,000-square-foot community center.

Richmond Habitat has neighborhoods under development elsewhere in Richmond as well as in Chesterfield, Henrico, Charles City and New Kent counties.

Flynn, the city's community development director, said she believes Richmond Habitat's new design approach means the homes will no longer be viewed as the stereotypical unattractive housing for low-income or subsidized residents.

"Someone passing by would think, 'That's a nice house,'" Flynn said.