Margi Glavovic Nothard uses her Fort Lauderdale, Florida architecture firm, Glavovic Studio, to explore creative ways to build affordable housing.
Nothard, a South African, decided to enter the affordable housing space after seeing homelessness in Los Angeles while attending the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the early 1990s as a graduate student. He did not expect to encounter such disparities that prevail in South Africa in the US
This perspective helped push Nothard to place a focus on multi-family affordable housing projects.
“It really became a passion and commitment of mine to think, ‘How can I use architecture as a tool to try to create housing that could be for everyone, regardless of income?'” he said. Nothard.
Margi Glavovic Nothard
Permission granted by Glavovic Studio
Starting with a 132-unit affordable community in Fort Lauderdale that meant redesign of an aging public housing complex in the early 2010s, Nothard is now developing several new multifamily homes in South Florida and Los Angeles. This includes a 12-story, 250 unit affordable building in Miami already Affordable 15-story residential tower in downtown LA, both in collaboration with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
When planning buildings, he looks for ways to reduce costs through modular construction, repurposing older buildings or identifying transit-adjacent locations where he can add more units while reducing parking costs.
Here, Nothard talks about the future and challenges of building affordable housing, how adaptive reuse can lower costs, and what makes South Florida such an attractive market.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Multifamily Immersion: What are some of the key moments in your affordable multifamily housing career?
MARGI GLAVOVIC NOTHARD: Working with the Housing Authority of the City of Fort Lauderdaleand then be hired by AIDS Healthcare Foundation looking at affordable housing models to try to find ways to specifically address housing affordability. They are for low and very low income renters.
That work was key to spending the next decade with them and others trying to find affordable housing solutions through design and looking at different aspects, whether it’s adaptive reuse, whether it’s modular construction or new construction, what are the elements that could reduce costs.
What challenges does Glavovic Studio face when working on adaptive reuse projects and how has the company navigated them?
The reuse of buildings is more sustainable and responsible with the environment. But also, from a developer’s point of view, it gives the developer options to reduce costs, potentially. This is not always the case and must be managed very carefully, but it could potentially be a faster project, which is generally more cost effective.
Adaptive reuse projects need to be considered very carefully because if you are using, say, a commercial building and it doesn’t have that much plumbing or all the plumbing isn’t where it would be optimally located for residential units, this can make a project quite expensive and not necessarily an effective tool.
But if someone, for example, converts motels or hotels that have smaller rooms, now you can imagine that adding a kitchen is not that difficult because you already have plumbing.
What are the unique challenges facing developers of affordable versus market rate or luxury multifamily housing?
There needs to be a lot more support to advance opportunities in affordable housing, and I say that because of the high demand. There is such a great need, and there isn’t a region I know of that doesn’t need affordable housing.
Some of the challenges when evaluating a potential project are things like transportation. Can we cut costs with less parking?
Most often, one or two parking spaces are required per unit. And when you look at more urban communities, obviously those costs can be anywhere, depending on the level of the project, from $30,000 per unit to one that we’re doing on a very small site in a very high economic area in Edgewater in Miami, where it costs $100,000 per space to build a structured parking lot.
You can see that with those kinds of numbers, you’re now pushed into a more market environment and not an affordable environment to be able to realize your returns for the developer. Therefore, having legislation or opportunities where transportation is widely available can provide more opportunities to lower prices for affordable multifamily developers.
Where do you see the economics of affordable multi-family housing trending?
almost half of US renters are considered cost- or rent-burdened. I’ve seen an increase in interest in building affordable housing over the past year, and I think that could be exponential.
Deloitte published an article that discussed approximately more than 90% of housing in the future will probably be done by adapting existing buildings, and that is also a future I can see. Very importantly, I think it will be better for the planet and better for the developer to have these opportunities from a financial perspective.
I also think our understanding and education about what affordable housing is and who affordable housing serves has expanded. It’s not necessarily a homeless person, it’s a person who has limited income or doesn’t have a change in income as prices go up.
The conversation around the country, in my opinion, is stronger and more educated, and so I think it will lead to an opportunity to have more affordable housing.
Glavovic Studio has invested heavily in South Florida. What makes the region so strong for development?
Florida seems to be a very popular place to move to right now. We have a large influx of residents who are new to Florida, which often drives costs up. In this environment, legislation that can effectively offer alternatives to existing residents is very important. This is why retrofitting existing buildings has worked quite well in parts of South Florida.
But above all there is also a general feeling that compared to, for example, California or New York, the costs are lower. I would argue that while the direct cost might be lower for a developer in one of our South Florida markets, the typical income is not as high as, say, California or New York, and so local residents may still have a higher cost burden.
In South Florida, the state Live Local Law 2023 it’s been huge I’ve really seen an increase in developers coming here and approaching us because of Live Local Law.
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