The Low Cost Of Living

Apartments in the recently completed 221-room J Street Inn go for $475 a month. Across from San Diego's convention center, the Inn stretches an equally tight budget even further. Quigley broke up the long four-story block by creating a boldly angled corner entrance with terraces on the setbacks above. Running down the spine of the site is a narrow courtyard, planted with bamboo and animated by water cascading along a split steel culvert. Reading and exercise rooms with large windows facing Second Street provide a sense of interaction between residents and passers-by. A sculpture over the entry, recessed lighting in the corridors, and showers and built-in furniture in every room give residents a sense of pride and added little to the budget.

The Baltic and the J Street Inn, which are for-profit ventures, have won top architectural awards, including the AIA Honor Award for Design Excellence, and have drawn a stream of visitors. John Kaliski, principal architect of Los Angeles' Community Redevelopment Agency, calls them "quite fantastic" and acknowledges that "San Diego is leading the country in its encouragement of private investment in this field." Construction has begun on two more Quigley-designed SROs, and other developers since have done similar work. Still to come, however, is a humane solution to the much greater problem of housing welfare recipients and the homeless.