The goal of this initiative is to deliver well-designed small-to-midsize, multi-home buildings that will contribute economical urban housing to the cities we call home – helping to incrementally improve the character and accessibility of our neighborhoods.
To achieve this, we are forming a vertically integrated company of real estate, design, and construction professionals to align our respective expertise and take ownership of our planning process and delivery methods. With a broad skill base, we plan to create high-quality, affordable, and unique housing solutions that will be great assets to the community and rewarding to those involved.
Why Multi-Family?
There are many reasons why our cities would benefit from more mid-sized multi-family homes. Greater density of housing promotes increased energy in our cities, making them lively, walkable, providing more available housing units, increased affordability, and efficient use of resources, to name a few. There are many areas in the Bay Area that have been previously built as single family neighborhoods and are generally under-built relative to the urban context they are within.
There has been a big push in the past decade or so to develop new public and private housing, with much of the progress being made by larger private development companies, non-profit Affordable Housing groups, and, to some degree, single family homeowners utilizing new ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) laws. While ADUs operate at the smallest scale of permitted housing, many housing development groups tend to focus on large scale projects that have a neighborhood-wide impact, often in or near downtown urban cores in the form of high-end apartments, or on the outskirts of downtowns as low-income public housing complexes. While there are some notable exceptions, this trend has created a building environment where middle-income, mid-sized housing plays a largely under represented role in addressing the current housing shortage, even though the majority of housing-zoned properties in our cities are small-to-mid-sized lots. It has created a lack of new middle-income housing. This gap in the housing stock points to an opportunity to expand and improve housing options for a large portion of our cities populations.
Creating new or revitalizing existing buildings is an inherently complex collaborative effort. To bring buildings to life requires the coming together of many different trades and distinct disciplines. While developers and financiers, architects and engineers, general contractors and sub-contractors necessarily work together on nearly every building project, they are typically hired on as disparate teams, with the motivations of the individual parties often misaligned, contributing to what is often considered a notoriously fragmented and inefficient building industry.
The CAHA Vision
By leveraging our position as process leaders and design experts we aim to create and lead a multidisciplinary team that can opportunistically work in the underdeveloped areas of our neighborhoods to create long-lasting, beautiful, simple, and healthy housing solutions for individuals and families in our communities. Through collaborative financing, thoughtful design, and intelligent building processes, CAHA and our partners are looking to show the Bay Area exciting examples of what everyday urban neighborhood housing can and should look like in the 21st century.
With a new business entity already in place and initial seed funding set aside for deployment once the target property has been identified, we are nearly ready to launch project #1. We have our legal, finance, and design partnerships in place, and are currently filling out the remaining roles for the construction side of our development team and gathering the remaining capital to fund our first project. Once the first property is secured, we will do what we do everyday at CAHA - skillfully and efficiently design the architecture and landscape, acquire permits, and set out on the building process. We are looking to build a robust team of industry professionals and community members. If you are interested in investing in our vision or participating in our process, please contact our Principal, Casey Ramirez, for more information.
(1 ) SPUR report on how to address 'the missing middle'
(2) Riaz Capital
