A six-person Stanford team recently won the Bank of America Low Income Housing Challenge for their innovative design for low-income apartment housing for homeless and other economically at-risk individuals.

During the competition, Universities in Northern and Central California paired up with developers to come up with a building project plan.

The project is judged on several factors, including financial feasibility, acceptance and impact in the community, innovation and, for the first time in the 16 year history of the Challenge, eco-friendly design features.

The teams had to design the hypothetical buildings from the ground-up.

“We had to find a site, decide what community to serve and figure out how to fund and finance the project,” said MBA candidate Andrew Cantor, who was the project manager. “We drove around the Bay Area for a couple of days checking out sites and picked a site that was actually available. We wanted to pick something that wasn’t just an academic project, something that could actually be built.”

In the end, the team chose a site in downtown San Francisco that was walking distance from Coit Tower and the Ferry Building and provided a view of the Bay Bridge. The site is currently owned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and is earmarked for use as affordable housing.

Cantor lauded the site for its broad appeal.

“It is an awesome place to live regardless of your income level,” Cantor said. “The location set the site apart because it is a place everyone wanted to live.”

Teams from UC-Berkeley and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo also participated in this year’s competition. The win is the first for Stanford since 2003.

The winning design included two five-story buildings around a courtyard. The project would house 150 people in 44 two- and three-bedroom apartments. Twenty-four of the apartments were designated for people who are homeless or at-risk for becoming homeless, while the remaining 20 apartments were reserved for low-income families.

The team is working with the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) to get their project built. The CCDC has a development plan very similar to the team’s design project and is currently in the final stages of bidding for the site.

“Assuming they get the bid, a project very similar to ours will be built,” Cantor said. “The team will stay involved with the project because we developed some expertise that could be useful. I’m looking forward to staying on top of it and seeing the project go forward.”