Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia has gotten into the condo business. Here’s why.

Malik Davis holds a special distinction: He is the first person ever to buy a condo from Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia.

Habitat for Humanity is known for building single-family homes for low- and moderate-income households. But the Philadelphia affiliate of the international nonprofit is currently selling its first condos as it tries to create more homeowners and chip away at the city’s shortage of affordable homes.

As a first-time buyer, Davis, 26, was concerned about being able to afford and maintain a single-family home.

“A condo was a much more reasonable purchase for myself,” said Davis, who works in human resources and bought his Strawberry Mansion home in a triplex for $290,000.

On Oct. 30, Davis closed on the home, reaching his goal of owning a property so he and his parents and siblings will “always have a place to call home in the city that I love,” he said. In mid-November, he moved into the two-bedroom, 1½-bathroom home located less than two miles from where he grew up that he plans to keep in his family “for many generations to come.”

“I’m still pinching myself every day,” he said. “I’m the first in my immediate family to buy a home. So it’s pretty exciting for all of us.”

Davis’ condo is one of three that Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia sold in its Coltrane Commons development in October. Four more condo buyers are scheduled to close on their homes on Dec. 19, and Habitat anticipates selling its last four condos by March.

It’s the culmination of years of research and planning by Habitat to try something new to tackle the shortage of homes that Philadelphians can afford. With condos, Habitat can fit more families onto the lots that it acquires mostly from agencies that distribute publicly owned land. And before accounting for subsidies based on homeowners’ incomes, Habitat’s condo units cost less than its single-family homes.

Habitat is not alone in trying out condos for affordable housing. Turn the Key, an ongoing initiative to use city-owned land to build 1,000 price-restricted homes for first-time Philadelphia buyers, is also offering condos. Both are experimenting with duplexes or triplexes instead of mid- or high-rise buildings with shared common areas that are typical of most city condos. Their units are in developments with single-family homes and have limited shared elements.

Rita Calicat, Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia’s director of homeowner services, said she knows condos aren’t what people typically think of when they think about Habitat. The sweet spot for the organization is building and selling three-bedroom, 1½-bathroom townhouse-type homes.

But the affiliate wanted to play a bigger role in increasing home ownership for Philadelphia’s low- and moderate-income households, and the organization’s leaders knew it couldn’t do that if it continued to offer only single-family homes, Calicat said.

So about three years ago, Habitat began seriously considering getting into multifamily housing.

“Just because of the lack of land available for us to build, if we were gonna have greater impact, we were going to have to think about this in a new way ... and we know this is one of the tools to do that,” Calicat said.

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Whether a household is matched to a single-family home or a condo is based on how many people will be living there and how much they can afford. Habitat works with households that make between 30% and 80% of the area median income, or between $31,000 and $82,600 for a household of three.

Providing multifamily housing seemed “very daunting at first,” Calicat said. For guidance, the organization looked to other Habitat affiliates in urban areas that faced similar challenges, had a similarly great need for affordable homes, and had turned to selling multifamily homes.

It reached out to fellow affiliates in New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles, but Philadelphia’s affiliate worked most closely with Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco, which has lots of experience with multifamily housing, Calicat said.

» READ MORE: A New Jersey Habitat for Humanity affiliate is building modular homes to move families in faster

“We can almost guarantee that multifamily is in our future,” she said. “It just means we’re widening our portfolio of options for the families that we serve.”

The organization is currently looking into another project that would incorporate a similar style of multifamily housing, said Ed McColly, director of real estate development for Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia.

Former City Council President Darrell L. Clarke had approached Habitat a few years ago and offered city-owned land for the organization’s Coltrane Commons development to make sure Strawberry Mansion continued to have affordable home ownership opportunities as developers showed renewed interest in the neighborhood, McColly said.

“Habitat really relies pretty heavily on acquiring property at nominal [cost] in order to increase affordability,” he said. “Land is really competitive and hard to come by.”

The lots were much larger than the ones Habitat typically builds on, he said. Given the lot sizes and the scale of surrounding homes on the block, building single-family homes would not have been appropriate, McColly said.

And by increasing housing density and building multiple homes on one foundation, “you’re able to get more bang for your buck in terms of cost effectiveness,” he said.

Eleven of the 21 homes in Habitat’s Coltrane Commons development are condos. To build those multifamily units in four duplexes and a triplex, Habitat partnered with an outside general contractor for the first time.

The condos are various sizes to accommodate various households. McColly said the finished homes challenged initial perceptions that he and his colleagues had that condos were small.

“They’re every bit as accommodating, spacious, and comfortable as any of our single-family homes,” he said. And in terms of quality, “they’re not a downgrade from what Habitat was doing previously.”

Habitat’s experiment with condos also meant it would need to set up a condo association for the first time.

“I’d always heard horror stories about HOAs,” said Davis, the first condo buyer. But attorneys at Ballard Spahr worked with Habitat pro bono to set up the documents and structure needed to create the condo association, and they taught homeowners what it means to live in a condo community.

In working with architects to design the condos, Habitat wanted to limit the number of shared elements to make governing the condo association easier. The condos have no shared indoor spaces, and each unit has its own entrance. The buildings’ exteriors, including roofs, porches, and stairs, are shared.

Like Habitat, Philadelphia’s Turn the Key program, announced in 2022, also started with a focus on constructing single-family homes.

But Civetta Property Group is currently building what will be Turn the Key’s first condos in the Carroll Park neighborhood of West Philadelphia on lots it got from the Philadelphia Land Bank. In 14 duplexes, 28 condos will be offered for $230,000 for two-bedroom units and $250,000 for three-bedroom units, before subsidies.

City Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. requested that Turn the Key offer condos at the site to provide another affordable option for residents. He said he specifically had in mind first-time buyers who need starter homes and retirees on fixed incomes who want to stay in their neighborhood.

“These condo units satisfy a growing demand for two distinct demographics of Philadelphians,” Jones said. “I think this kind of product can be popular in my district and in others.”

David Thomas, president and chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp., which administers Turn the Key, said the organization was willing to give condos a shot to provide an opportunity that the program hadn’t initially considered. The agency will be gauging the success of this foray into condos to determine whether to ask developers to build more of them.

“At the end of the day, I can’t argue with the opportunity,” Thomas said. “We also have to think outside the box sometimes when we’re trying to solve problems.”