The Denver Housing Authority is looking into new ways to increase the city's housing stock. Its new apartment complex takes advantage of one option that's been on the minds of Denverites: office-space conversions.
DHA announced last week that they renovated a former medical office building at 655 Broadway, turning the space into an affordable apartment building.
The nine-story building houses 96 affordable units for seniors and disabled individuals. There are also an additional 14 apartments that will be used to help transition unhoused patients from Denver Health into housing after their hospital stay.
The units range from studios to one-bedrooms with rents ranging from $950 to $1,250 with voucher and government assistance, depending on income eligibility requirements. DHA said the units will have a max area median income level of 60%. For an individual, 60% AMI is about $52,140. They also added that about 36 units will be rented out at 30% of a resident's income.
DHA acquired the building from Denver Health in May 2020 for $5 million. The project then received $18 million in housing tax credits from Enterprise Housing Credit Investments, an affordable housing nonprofit.
Residents began moving in to the new complex on Tuesday.
"Adaptive re-use of this scale, and with the added layer of this being a historic building, is highly complex. This project demonstrates what is possible when so many partners -- a housing authority, a public hospital, lenders, contractors, and many, many more -- come together for the purpose of delivering high-quality affordable housing and of preserving an iconic structure," DHA officials said.
DHA added that there aren't immediate plans to convert more office space into housing, but it is "committed to finding creative solutions to increase the supply of affordable housing in Denver."
City planners are also looking to convert office spaces into housing, as more buildings remain empty due to remote work and other financial factors. A downtown-focused study from earlier this year identified 16 buildings that could be converted into housing. If they were converted, more than 5,000 units would be available in the Central Business District, making the area into more of a neighborhood, balancing out Denver's offices with residential and retail space.
