Temple Street

386 affordable units across three buildings on the Nashua River. Five levels of wood over a concrete podium- the type that does most of the affordable housing built in this country, and the type that punishes you for every foot you get wrong on the podium.

New Hampshire Housing backed it with $32 million in bonds. It comes with a condition attached to the drawing: forty percent of the units have to be affordable at 60% of area median income, and stay that way. That takes the developer, the lender, the city and the architect all holding the same unit count. The city added a $700,000 InvestNH award on top.

It was the developer's first project at this scale. A lot of the work was not drawing. It was keeping a scheme intact through the funding process, where every review is another chance for the unit count to move and the building to have to follow it.