Nonprofit Community HousingWorks (CHW) has created an intergenerational community in the heart of National City, California. The 145-unit Kimball Highland Apartments connects families and seniors with health care, affordable housing, and transportation.
The development is the affordable housing component of the Kimball Highland Master Plan, which will come to fruition this summer with the completion of a federally qualified Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) Center, San Ysidro Health’s health care component.
PROJECT DETAILS
DEVELOPER: Community HousingWorks
ARCHITECT: Studio E Architects
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Sun Country Builders
MAJOR FUNDERS: Bank of America; National City; California Housing Finance Agency; California Tax Credit Allocation Committee; California Debt Limit Allocation Committee
Kimball Highland Apartments serves families and older adults with incomes between 30% and 80% of the area median income. On-site services—including an after-school program, adult education, health and wellness classes, and financial coaching—promote a sense of shared community and better health outcomes for residents.
“We strongly believe in intergenerational living, it’s too easy for seniors to become isolated from the rest of the fabric of the community,” says Kevin Leichner, CHW senior vice president of housing and real estate development. “This is a model that we try to replicate within our portfolio. We see a lot of benefits to this intergenerational housing and interaction, and then to be able to anchor it with this large federal PACE Center just made it that much better.”
Chipper Hatter
National City was instrumental to the $85.6 million development. It had an older senior center in need of repair and offered to lease the land of that site to CHW for its development in return for a new senior center on the ground floor of the new building. The senior center as well as the PACE Center benefit local residents as well as seniors from two additional CHW properties nearby. In addition, the senior center has been designated as a “cool zone,” a public location that is air conditioned and accessible to anyone needing to stay safe from the heat.
“We have another 303 senior units at Kimball and Morgan Towers that are part of this overall site that can all access the federal PACE Center,” adds Leichner. “It’s a huge benefit to not only our residents, but the community at large.”