HUD Selects City of Madison Community Development Authority’s Bjarnes Romnes Apartments as Study Area for the Annual Innovation in Affordable Housin

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) selected the City of Madison Community Development Authority (CDA) to be the partnering public housing agency for the 11th annual Innovation in Affordable Housing (IAH) Student Design and Planning Competition. The CDA applied to host the competition and identified the Bjarnes Romnes Apartments site, 540 W. Olin Avenue as the project study area.  HUD selected the CDA to be the host agency through a nationwide competitive application process.

Each year, HUD`s Innovation in Affordable Housing competition invites graduate students enrolled in accredited educational institutions in the United States to form multi-disciplinary teams to respond to an existing affordable housing design and planning issue. The competition requires teams composed of graduate students in architecture, planning and policy, finance, and other areas to address social, economic, environmental, design, financial, and construction issues in addition to an affordable housing design challenge.

The Madison CDA currently owns and operates the Romnes Apartments, a 169-unit public housing building on a 7-acre site opened in 1968. As the two-story, horseshoe-shaped structure would likely face overwhelming rehabilitation and modernization costs in its existing form, CDA expects that it may be most cost-effective to ultimately demolish the facility and replace it with one or more buildings on the same site that would provide improved resident amenities, sustainable and climate-friendly design features, and operational efficiencies...
   ...more