New Life Housing
affordable housing for low income families

Shiloh Baptist Church and Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) hired Schemata Workshop to design two buildings on sites adjacent to the Church in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, a historically Black neighborhood experiencing a significant real estate development boom, and therefore susceptible to significant displacement. The two buildings are located on separate sites and one (at 13th Street) will serve as transitional housing for 20 individuals or families and the other building (on I Street) will serve 40 individuals or families. The zoning, site topography, and proximity of power lines informed the conceptual designs. THA wanted to study the optimal size of project site to right-size operational costs – requesting conceptual designs that met the maximum building height as well as options that under-developed the site capacity. The project is awaiting final funding from Federal BBB funds.