Berkeleyan

First Terner Prize for affordable housing awarded

28 February 2007

The inaugural I. Donald Terner Prize for Innovation and Leadership in Affordable Housing - named for the late Berkeley professor and founder of Bridge Housing in San Francisco - has been awarded to Central City Concern for a building that provides 180 units of housing for nearly 700 formerly homeless residents in the historic Pearl District of Portland, Ore.

Donald Terner

Terner, an architect and social entrepreneur who served on the faculties at MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley, died in April 1996 in a plane crash with U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown while on a humanitarian mission to Bosnia. The $50,000 biennial award, presented Jan. 31 in Washington, D.C., was created to commemorate his death and inspire projects that exemplify his spirit and commitment to affordable housing. More than 80 projects competed for the honor this year.

"Gentrification in our cities is creating stiff competition for developers of affordable housing," said Berkeley's Harrison Fraker, dean of the College of Environmental Design, in presenting the award. "Today we are shining a bright light on Central City Concern as a prime example of what local leaders in the field are accomplishing in so many places."

The Terner Prize is administered by the campus Center for Community Innovation, whose mission includes work to revitalize neighborhoods and produce and preserve affordable housing. The 13-member advisory council for the prize includes CED's Fraker and Graduate School of Journalism lecturer Dierdre English, Terner's widow.

In addition to this new award, Berkeley established the I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professorship in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics in 1998.