Affordable housing design: 10 ways to focus on engagement in residential projects
June 05, 2025
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Looking into the consequences of skipping community engagement vs. the benefits of including it
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A version of this blog first appeared as “Let’s talk: Promoting inclusive dialogue on affordable residential projects” in Design Quarterly, Issue 24.
Housing affordability is a major issue in North America. Some call it a crisis. How might better engagement enhance affordable housing design?
We’re seeing cities respond with a range of approaches to increase the supply of housing. Some are changing their zoning. They are allowing more multifamily residential where they once promoted single-family homes. We see more ADUs (alternate dwelling units) and TOD (transit-oriented development). Taller buildings and microunits are getting the green light. Approaches that boost the density, supply, and affordability of housing are catching on. These efforts open the way to affordable housing design.
People are a key part of the affordability conversation. It’s clear that community engagement plays an important role in getting affordable housing right. Many local governments have processes in place to gather community feedback. This is especially the case for larger residential developments or those with an affordable component. But engagement can benefit any residential project, not just affordable housing design.
This is a key point for multifamily projects and affordable housing developers. Engaging with people in the neighborhood can elevate your projects. We have seen how long-term community participation can speed approvals. It helps enrich affordable housing design. And it provides better outcomes for the neighborhood.
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Engagement with the community revealed surprising tastes in materials surrounding the Bunker Hill project in Boston, Massachusetts. For some residents, red brick had a negative connotation. Shown here is Bunker Hill Redevelopment Building F.
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Let’s look at the consequences when community engagement is overlooked for residential projects. Then, we’ll look at the benefits.
Overlooking community engagement vs. its benefits
Unwelcoming vs. insight-driven: Without engagement, designers will miss insights from potential residents and those who live in the community. For example, a design may not address potential security concerns. That could lead to unwelcoming environments. Or it might not recognize meaningful aesthetic preferences. For example, let’s look at the Bunker Hill Housing Redevelopment in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Our team’s engagement revealed surprising tastes in materials. Red brick had a negative connotation for some residents—they associated it with neglected housing projects of the past. With craft and care, however, we were able to design with brick. Residents were able to renew their relationship with the material.
Community engagement leads to affordable housing designs that better meet the needs and wants of the people who will use the spaces. The insights allow designers to tailor a development to better match the local community.
Reflexive opposition vs. informed partnership: Without proper engagement, the community can see a new project as an imposition—something they don’t want. This can create a negative impression before design gets off the ground. Lack of communication can make it hard for projects to gain approvals and proceed smoothly. Engagement allows for a meaningful conversation. Community groups are often well-organized and have a deeply vested interest in successful development. They make good partners and allies.
At Bunker Hill, for example, the community was concerned with the plans that would increase density in an established neighborhood. It required careful listening, strong urban design concepts, and a thoughtful master plan to address the issue. Close collaboration with the community impacted the design. We placed lower buildings near the neighborhood edge and taller buildings farther away. This helped to respect the scale of the existing neighborhood.
Mundane details vs. neighborhood vibrancy: When looking at affordable housing design, building amenities can make a real difference. And public-facing retail elements can add to the vibrancy of the neighborhood. Without much community input, the design for the affordable units, amenities, or retail frontage can be an exercise in cost-cutting. We’re looking for insights that will help us design features that enliven the street life of the neighborhood. And we want to design in the extras that residents want. Things like pet washing stations, bicycle storage, or community gardens. Engagement helps designers tailor programming to the neighborhood and gauge support for retail offerings.
Neighborhood groups shared priceless input during the approval process for 50 Herald Street at the edge of Boston’s Chinatown. They wanted space for an Asian grocery store and more three-bedroom units to support larger families.
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Feedback from neighborhood groups helped shape the planning for 50 Herald Street in Boston, Massachusetts. They wanted space for an Asian grocery store and more three-bedroom units to support larger families.
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Disinterest vs. sense of ownership: A sense of ownership is vital for residential projects to have long-term success. And a lack of engagement can hurt. Participating in the design process gives community members a sense of ownership. Whether they live in the building or not, we want locals to see the public-facing and retail components as part of the neighborhood.
Vacant spaces vs. market viability: Developers of multifamily housing should know that engagement can impact the bottom line. An ill-informed affordable housing design can require costly changes or retrofits later. Without insight from the community, developers have a higher risk of delivering a building that is misaligned with the marketplace. The result? Vacant commercial spaces and unleased residential units. Engagement impacts the financial viability of the project.
With the right community input, designers and developers can identify these issues earlier. Effective community engagement should lead to development that meets the needs and desires of the target market. It can help sell housing and activate the neighborhood.
So, what are some practices we recommend for productive community engagement?
1. Develop a holistic engagement strategy: What are you hoping to learn from the process? Which groups are the appropriate community representatives, and how do you communicate with them? And how much of the feedback that you’re asking for can you apply to the design?
2. Engage early: The better the information gathered at the project’s outset, the deeper the collaboration and the richer the design details. Build time to listen and engage with the community into the project schedule. It will pay off in the long run. From the start, the planning process for Bunker Hill included the Charlestown Residents Alliance. The group represented existing residents in an engagement process lasting several years. They engaged in public meetings with the wider neighborhood, the Charlestown Preservation Society, and the City of Boston.
" }Build time to listen and engage with the community into the project schedule. It will pay off in the long run.
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3. Create multiple contact points and ways to share information: Consider a multipronged approach to communication. Some people are more digitally active than others. We suggest a combination of in-person and digital meetings, brainstorming sessions, and focus groups to gather community feedback. Variety delivers diverse input and thorough engagement.
4. Ask the right questions: Look for feedback and real experiences, not a solution. Curate questions to be respectful of a diversified demographic. Understanding that the outcomes of our outreach may or may not be varied, we have a better chance of evaluating feedback received through a more inclusive or specific lens.
5. Show, don’t tell: Terms like “density” and “walkability” are common for designers and planners. But they may not connect with the public. Don’t just present abstract concepts. Explain what density, affordability, and walkability mean in daily life—but not just with words. Show a walking map of the neighborhood, for example. We can show how density supports more businesses, increases the tax base, and improves infrastructure and safety. That type of messaging helps spur more meaningful engagement.
6. Make it visual, inclusive, and interactive: Consider visuals that will resonate with the community and allow for a reaction. Also look into ways to show multiple options that reflect community priorities. Can we create images in real-time based on live feedback? We are already using AI and virtual reality in this way for some of our projects.
7. Gamify the experience: We can use customized games in engagement sessions to show the options and trade-offs available in development. For example, in Denver, Colorado, we created an interactive game to use in engagement sessions. Gameplay gave community members a chance to suggest programmatic elements for the redevelopment of the Park Hill Golf Course. The game allowed our collaborators to see different options.
8. Partner with engagement experts: There’s an art to collaboration. And designers who have deep experience working with users and drawing out their wants and needs are valuable. They can help guide these long-term engagement programs.
9. Record, collect, and evaluate the data: Engagement is valuable. It’s fuel for creativity. So, how are we capturing the data from our interactions with the community? Digital questionnaires? Design workbooks? Or an analog idea box? And who is sorting through the material and finding the key insights that will shape the design? It’s important for us to have a method for harvesting this collaborative data.
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Gameplay gave community members a chance to suggest programmatic elements for the redevelopment of the Park Hill Golf Course in Denver, Colorado.
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10. Incorporate the results in the design: It might sound obvious, but we should design with what we’ve learned. Everything we discover through the outreach, engagement, and evaluation processes can inform our design concepts and the project itself. For example, community feedback had us revise the unit makeup for a residential project in California. Neighbors wanted a building that connected to its surroundings. We reduced the number of two-bedroom and efficiency units in favor of studios and one-bedroom spaces. And in lieu of building amenities or ground floor retail, our revised design offered better access to outdoor spaces.
How designers can be good neighbors
As designers, we know that engagement on affordable housing design is important. It’s our mission to listen with empathy and merge community needs with project reality. Engagement is critical to our information gathering. Our role is to transform that data into something that’s functional, beautiful, and financially realistic.
Designing affordable residential projects is a rare opportunity. It’s a chance for multifamily building dwellers to work with designers to create a home from the ground up. It requires a lot of thoughtful design to rein in a large-scale building, so it feels like a good neighbor. With the right touch and input, even mega-block programs can fit seamlessly into a neighborhood.
In our residential design practice, we’ve seen the value and the result from productive community engagement. The bottom line: it makes better projects. Engagement is critical to designing multifamily projects to address the need for affordable housing.
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