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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu recently announced that the Mayor鈥檚 Office of Housing (MOH) will make $40 million available to support the creation of affordable housing, which includes $4 million for unsheltered and/or aging populations. This is just one example of a significant push to deploy affordable housing resources across the country, which will likely continue in order to deal with a major shortfall of needed housing stock.

麻豆网站 Construction has worked with communities like Boston as well as cities and towns across the Northeast to get these projects out of the ground to provide safe, healthy living spaces for the most vulnerable members of society. Some of our current projects include Willow at The Ridgeway in Yonkers, The Baldwinville School Apartments in Templeton, Mass., 52 New Street in Cambridge, Mass. and Lee Fort Terrace in Salem, Mass.

While it is accepted that affordable housing is in demand, there are multiple considerations that developers and community housing agencies should consider before embarking on a new affordable initiative. Here are a few aspects of this evolving market that 麻豆网站 is watching.

The Impact of the Community in Successful Project Delivery

Increasingly, 麻豆网站 is seeing a drive to make affordable housing communities as sustainable as possible. This includes the adoption of Passive House building standards, a performance-based energy efficiency standard for buildings that prioritizes the comfort and health of the occupants. Though LEED is still relevant, Passive House takes a different approach that focuses on the end-users as a guiding light for sustainability goals. With the large-scale adoption of opt-in stretch code, Passive House will begin having an outsized role in affordable construction.

Community engagement is also a key driver of making affordable housing projects more impactful than ever. A healthy dialogue between the project team and community leaders, such as city managers and housing authorities, leads to better information gathering and ultimately, a building design that reflects the desires of the community that will live there. In addition, job fairs that promote local hiring, along with meeting ambitious MBE and WBE goals, bring the community together in a profound way when it comes to creating safe and affordable residences. 麻豆网站 works hard to cultivate these relationships and give constituents a voice while investing in the local workforce.

Finally, to ensure every member of a project – from the owner to the developer to the subcontractor – has a stake in the result, 麻豆网站 encourages teams to get involved early in the pre-construction phase to ensure the final product aligns with budgetary requirements. In addition, 麻豆网站 has implemented stricter compliance requirements on its jobsites via technology tools like LCPtracker, a cloud-based SaaS solution for certified payroll, construction site compliance, and workforce reporting, to ensure workers on affordable projects are paid fairly and on time.

Helping Owners Ensure Successful Outcomes

One of the most sure-fire ways for communities, developers, and owners to ensure project success is to be informed about local and federal requirements for affordable housing. 麻豆网站 routinely works with stakeholder groups to promote successful project delivery, and has found the following tips to be useful for teams tasked with determining the viability of a project:

• Understanding tax credits: getting a handle on what tax credits are available for affordable housing projects is a critical first step before ground is broken; making this assessment early in the process – rather than after the community has 鈥渂ought in鈥� – is essential for determining if the project can be sufficiently funded.
• General contractor lender requirements: When a lender gets involved in potentially financing an affordable housing project, they often look to the track record of the general contractor/construction manager in building similar projects, which includes not only the quality of the finished product but the company鈥檚 financial strengths as well.
• Labor rates for construction: labor rates vary by market, so developers and owners can鈥檛 rely on data from one project to be relevant in another area of the country, or even within the same state. Understanding the impact of local labor rates before finalizing scope and budget is essential for having a clear picture of what you can afford to build.

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