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SALT LAKE CITY — Most people who drive by the former Salt Lake City public safety building at 315 E. 200 South see an aging, 1950s-era facility ringed by chain-link fence.
But when the city's Division of Housing and Neighborhood Development sought proposals last year to develop the building and adjacent land, Cowboy Partners and Form Development saw an array possibilities for people who need housing across a spectrum of household incomes and life circumstances.
The partners' proposal was selected by city officials to develop a project there, which will be named Violin School Common.
While Cowboy Partners has developed multiple housing developments in Salt Lake County with sizable numbers of affordable housing units, this marks the first time the company has partnered to develop permanent supportive housing for people who have experienced homelessness.
When asked why, Cowboy Partners' CEO and president Dan Lofgren replied, "It's important, isn't it?"
"How often in your life do you get to accomplish something that's really important? Never, if you don't try," Lofgren said. "We're constantly rewarded by accomplishing some of those hard things. There's more to this than just the economics. We're excited about making a contribution in the broader sense."
Permanent supportive housing combines affordable housing with services intended to provide stability, autonomy and dignity to people experiencing homelessness. Studies indicate that supportive housing costs less than people remaining homeless and reliant on high-cost emergency services and shelter.
Cowboy Partners has extensive expertise in developing housing across a wide variety of incomes, Lofgren said, but the project needed The Road Home's programming know-how to make Violin School Common work. The name acknowledges the Violin Making School of America, the block's longtime neighbor to the south.
"Our willingness to press forward was predicated in a large part on the opportunity to partner with The Road Home," Lofgren said.
The project will include 248 housing units ranging from market-rate one- and two-bedroom units to 65 studio apartments of permanent supportive housing in a stand-alone building to be named The Magnolia.
"It's a meaningful number of units that moves the needle in the right direction," said Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home.
The Magnolia, which would be owned and operated by The Road Home, would become the latest addition to its housing program. The Road Home also utilizes Palmer Court, a stand-alone permanent supportive housing development it owns with 201 units, to paying rent at more than 400 units scattered across Salt Lake County.
It also owns and operates Wendell Apartments, a 32-unit building, and single-family dwellings it owns itself or in partnership with other entities.
The Road Home serves more than 1,700 people in housing any given night, a number that far exceeds the average number of people served in its combined shelters, which is 883, according to its internal reports.
Numbers of people served by the Road Home's housing programs also exceed peak capacity of its shelters and overflow, nearly 1,400.
This past week, The Road Home served 1,888 people in housing across the county, 871 of them children, Minkevitch said.
The Magnolia will serve single men and single women, providing them stable housing and services to help address the issues that resulted in their homelessness.
"It would be a person with whom agencies like us are familiar," Minkevitch said. "It’s a person who’s consumed hundreds of nights in the sheltering system, has probably slept many nights on the street in some cases. It’s a person who is probably a little older, although we don’t have any age requirements, per se.
"It’s someone for whom the shelter has been their most stable address for the past several years. It’s someone whom likely has some health issues, maybe more than one or more than two. In some cases, more than three, overlapping health issues."
Mike Akerlow, director of the city's Division of Housing and Neighborhood Development, said another exciting aspect of the Violin School Common project is a social enterprise intended to help Road Home clients develop skills that enable them to transition into better-paying jobs.
"We don’t want it be something where it’s just a ‘come learn a skill,' and then you’re kind of stuck with that skill. This will be a place where you can learn and grow,” he said.
A group including representatives of The Road Home, Utah Department of Workforce Services, Salt Lake City, City Councilman Derek Kitchen is working on that aspect of the project, Akerlow said.
The city and the developers are in ongoing negotiations over the development. Lofgren said construction is planned to begin in 2017, but no firm date is set at this point.
Plans include historic renovation of the Northwest Pipeline Building, which was built in the 1950s and is an example of the International style of architecture. In its later years, it housed the city's public safety functions. It will be repurposed as housing as the Metropolitan Building.
Violin School Common will also include 48 units of affordable housing.
Salt Lake City, like the state and the nation, has an acute need for affordable housing, Akerlow said.
"The greatest need is for those at or below 40 percent (area median income)," which represents a $29,000 household income for a family of four, he said.
Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski's administration and the City Council are exploring ways to meet the housing needs of people in the city, which Akerlow said will likely mean better policies, improved incentives and better funding.
"If we continue the way we're going, we're not going to make the progress we need," he said.
To that end, the city's housing division will present an updated market study to the City Council on Sept. 6 to help inform changes in policy and practice.
While previous studies suggest the city needs some 7,500 units of affordable housing, planners and policymakers also need to be cognizant of a significant number of people whose housing expenses exceed 30 percent of their incomes, Akerlow said.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development considers such households "cost burdened," meaning families may have difficulty affording other necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care.
Deeply affordable housing both prevents homelessness and provides an exit strategy for individuals and families who are prepared to leave The Road Home's sheltering and housing programs, Minkevitch said.
Shelters are part of the system of caring for people experiencing homeless, but they are not a solution in and of themselves, he said. That's why the system needs an array of housing and supports.
"We would hope that people are able to utilize other services available in our community so that people aren't tattooed with an episode of homelessness but it's a brief footnote in the story of their lives," Minkevitch said.
For its part, Cowboy Partners looks forward to creating a development that spans a variety of needs in the marketplace, Lofgren said.
"Our experienced with mixed-income housing has us pretty excited about this," he said.
The Magnolia is the right size and "an important installment in that kind of housing and that housing opportunity," Lofgren said.
"But it's not so many units it's going to establish the personality for that massive development area," he said. "Our experience with mixed-income development generally has us encouraged that there's going to be no diminution of marketability of what we're doing there." Email: marjorie@deseretnews.com
