By Jay Fox

Selfhelp does not take its mission lightly. Founded in 1936 to assist Jewish Europeans escaping Nazi persecution, the not-for-profit has been committed to being “the last surviving relative to our constituency,” according to Selfhelp Realty Group Vice President of Design & Construction Susan Wright. To this day, the organization still serves more than 5,000 Holocaust survivors in the New York City area.

The organization provided Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors with social services before, during, and shortly after World War II, but later expanded their scope of work to better meet the needs of the community. This inevitably involved affordable housing. In 1964 Selfhelp opened their first apartment building, the Helen R. Scheuer House, which sits just south of the intersection of Kissena Boulevard and 45^th Avenue (45-25 Kissena Blvd) in Queens’ Flushing neighborhood. Since that time, five additional Selfhelp buildings have sprouted up around this intersection and comprise the organization’s Flushing campus.

A seventh building, Kissena House, will soon be added to the campus. It is currently in design development, received a Buildings of Excellence Award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) earlier this year, and will seek certification through the Phius CORE standard.

Expanding Selfhelp and SHASAM

Selfhelp does not solely operate out of Queens any longer. They also have buildings in the Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Long Island. Moreover, Selfhelp now provides social services to vulnerable New Yorkers from all walks of life.

Currently, the organization has a real estate portfolio overseen by Selfhelp Realty Group that consists of 19 buildings. According to Selfhelp Realty Group Executive Director Lisa Trub, many of these developments beyond the Flushing campus have involved partnerships with other organizations. In total, Selfhelp now provides assistance to more than 25,000 adults in the New York City area, including housing to over 1,900 residents, many of whom are transitioning from homelessness to stability.

Selfhelp Realty Group also houses The Melamid Institute for Affordable Housing, which seeks to understand how to create the most beautiful and safe housing for low-income people. For decades, Selfhelp has pioneered a unique model for care, the Selfhelp Active Services for Aging Model (SHASAM), which is an evidence-based approach to providing case management and health services to residents. As Trub explains, “At each building there’s at least one onsite social worker, a Selfhelp social worker, who provides onsite social services to residents on an as-needed, as-requested basis.”

The type of assistance can range from helping residents complete administrative tasks or paying bills to providing transportation to medical appointments and aftercare following procedures. The SHASAM program also utilizes community rooms to promote health and wellness by bringing in educators who speak about health and wellness, as well as healthcare workers who provide free services like blood pressure screenings. They’re also an ideal place for the residents to get together and enjoy community events like bingo or a movie night.

Selfhelp’s portfolio also consists of some intergenerational housing, such as the Pearl: a 270-unit, 100% affordable building on Bay Street in Staten Island. Completed in 2024, the Pearl provides housing to formerly homeless individuals over the age of 55 and families who earn up to 80% AMI.

Selfhelp engaged Curtis + Ginsberg Architects LLP because they trusted that the firm could overcome the challenges associated with maximizing the number of units they could build within such a tight space while also creating something beautiful, comfortable, and efficient. They were also confident that Curtis + Ginsberg could obtain the special permitting necessary to reduce the size of the parking lot and create space to build on the site—a process that involved navigating a complex permitting process through the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals.

As Curtis + Ginsberg Partner Sean Flynn explains, the goal was not simply to add as many units as possible or to maximize the volume allowed by zoning. “We’re also tying the pieces together and improving the overall quality of the site and the experience for folks,” Flynn says. There will still be robust landscaping features, and the new schema will create a more cohesive community among the four buildings once construction on Kissena House is complete.

Like most other Selfhelp properties, Kissena House will be 100% affordable and all 111 units will be reserved for seniors. Roughly thirty percent will be set aside for formerly homeless individuals. It will also rely on the same SHASAM program that has been so successful in other buildings.

Building for Resilience and Efficiency

Kissena House also represents an evolution in Selfhelp’s dedication to healthy, resilient, and sustainable design. Though the building is currently in design development, Selfhelp has already decided that it will be all-electric and seek Phius CORE certification.

Wright, an architect by training and a Certified Passive House Designer, says that the decision to certify through Phius was driven by a desire to reduce operational costs and to take a more proactive stand on climate issues. Wright says that Selfhelp was also attracted to Passive House because passive buildings act as thermal batteries during power outages, staying cool when it is hot outside, staying warm when it is cold outside, and allowing residents to more comfortably shelter in place. While this is largely an issue of comfort for young adults, it can be a matter of life or death for seniors.

Though the decision to pursue Passive House certification was made early in the design process, site constraints have limited the team’s ability to optimize orientation with respect to solar gains. “There wasn’t any way we could reposition or expand,” Flynn says. “This really is where it needs to be and can only be.”

To ensure the building stays comfortable, Flynn notes that the design makes use of solar shading elements on the façade and light-colored massing to reflect solar radiation, while the team is exploring the use of an integrated photovoltaic (PV) rainscreen on the south-facing façade. The building will be topped with a PV array mounted onto a trellis (to comply with New York City’s fire codes) and a green roof to reduce solar gains and assist with stormwater management. Limited mechanical equipment for the centralized ERV system will also be positioned on the roof.

The unique interior site influenced materials choices and decisions about how to actually construct Kissena House. Ultimately, the least challenging option was to create a concrete-frame building with a concrete foundation because using a large crane for concrete plank construction was simply not feasible. The team still intends to use smaller, spider cranes at the site, however, as the current plan is to use a high-performance, prefabricated panel system—with high-performance windows—for the enclosure to speed up construction and reduce the amount of time neighbors will be exposed to construction noise. The panels simply need to be lifted into place and then sealed. The team has yet to confirm a manufacturer at this time.

Though the floor plan is a relatively dense, double-loaded corridor, internal heat gains are not as significant as they are with student housing or other types of affordable housing where an entire family may share just a few rooms. Most of the units are small and meant for an individual or a couple, with 63% (70) apartments being studios and 36% (40) being one-bedrooms. There’s also one two-bedroom unit. Meanwhile, steps have been taken to keep hallways and common spaces cool. In the case of hallways on the floors with units, there are no windows. In the case of the community rooms on the lower floors, passive shading and active cooling systems will be in place to ensure “those reservoirs of heat gain won’t occur,” Flynn says.

One of the more innovative aspects of the projects is its use of geothermal in such a tight space. Following a feasibility study by ZBF Geothermal, the team recognized that it may be able to provide all the heating and cooling to Kissena House with only around two dozen bore holes and a 1,600-ft² equipment room in the building’s cellar—though they will likely need to supplement for the domestic hot water system.

According to Wright, the award money from the Buildings of Excellence Competition has encouraged them to move forward with its installation. “That million dollars is going to go towards the hard costs associated with putting in that system,” Wright says. While it won’t cover the entirety of the system, she says that it will certainly make a difference.

“The influence of NYSERDA to push us to think about these things is very important,” Flynn adds.