Graduate students from the University of Illinois-Chicago recently scored the winning design for an underdeveloped Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) site as part of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Innovation in Affordable Housing (IAH) Competition. Their design plans beat out finalist groups at Harvard University, University of Texas and University from Maryland. The four teams designed solutions for a CHA site at 420-430 W. North. UIC, which won the $20,000 first place prize, was announced as the winner at an event earlier this month at HUD Headquarters in Washington D.C. The Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition is an initiative from HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research. Now celebrating its 10th year, the competition invites teams of graduate students from multiple disciplines to submit plans in response to a “real life” affordable housing design issue. The primary goal of this year’s competition was to maximize the number of affordable units on the North Ave site, which is located in a thriving neighborhood and contains two vacant, low-rise six-unit public housing buildings past their useful life. For additional information, please visit the About the Competition page https://www.huduser.gov/portal/challenge/about.html