May 18, 2015
Runstad Center graduate student team wins low-income housing challenge
UW graduate students created this design to win the Bank of America Low-Income Housing Challenge on May 14 in San Francisco.
An interdisciplinary team of UW graduate students and its proposal for a 69-unit affordable housing development in Tacoma’s Wedge neighborhood has won the 24th annual Bank of America Low-Income Housing Challenge, held May 14 in San Francisco.
The team was organized by the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies, which is in the UW College of Built Environments. Members were Ben Broesamle and Sam Yimparsit of the Master of Science in Real Estate program, Zi Cai and Genevieve Hale-Case of the Master of Urban Planning program, Mohammed Al-Humaid and Raymond Sayers of the Master of Architecture and Martha Sassorossi, a graduate student in the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance.
An initial field of 10 university teams was reduced to eight, then four for the final round, judged in San Francisco by a panel of housing developers, architects and financial partners. The other finalists were the California Polytechnic State University and the University of California, Los Angeles and Berkeley.
“Seattle, like every other major city in the U.S., is struggling in its attempt to confront a crises in affordability,” said Stephen O’Connor, Runstad Center director. “That is why it is incumbent upon us and every real estate program in this country to train our students to help meet this challenge.”
