How Mixed-Income Communities Can Increase Housing Affordability

City Square 162, a new four-story apartment building in New Orleans, will feature an event space, a fitness center, and a computer lab. Residents will have access to after-school and summer programs, and plans are in place for bike paths that will connect the neighborhood to a popular bike trial. But the thoughtfully designed community isn’t another amenity-packed luxury apartment complex: Just under half of the units in City Square 162 are designated subsidized housing or reserved for those with Section 8 vouchers. After years of building mostly high-income developments, a trend seen in many cities, New Orleans is now focusing on creating mixed-income developments that can ease the lack of affordable housing in the city while also increasing access to wellness, recreation, and parenting services that are usually associated with higher rent.

As in many growing U.S. cities, much of the new housing in New Orleans is on the high end. According to HousingNOLA, an advocacy group, the city needs to build more than 33,000 additional units of affordable housing by 2025 to meet the demand created by a city that is still recovering from the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina, while feeling the effects of a growing population, and is driven by a relatively low-wage service economy.

In late February, the city, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), and community developer McCormack Baron Salazar broke ground on a new mixed-income housing project in the Tremé neighborhood that will help meet some of that need. Known as City Square 162, the four-story apartment building will have 76 one- and two-bedroom units. Of those, 15 units will be subsidized public housing and 15 will be reserved for Section 8 voucher holders. The remaining 46 units will be rented at market rates. McCormack Baron Salazar said that all of the units are built to the same standard, regardless of whether they have subsidized rents.

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