Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: affordable cohousing, etc.

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

In Washington State there are couple of good examples of how to do 
affordable housing. Both are set up as land trusts. The Opal land trust 
has 25 small houses and they are planning a small community room (a 
large scale commonhouse is way out of their means).  The land for Opal 
was purchased with a grant from the WA state Housing Commission.  One 
of the original members spent a month learning about and writing the 
grant.  The funding for the home construction came from a local banks 
affordablilty programs. SInce they owned the land, the bank was happy 
to give them mortgages.

I attended a funding seminar about a year ago where several groups 
doing low income housing and several banks came and shared info.  The 
key message they all brought is that there is a large amount of 
programs available, many options and many ways to solve problems.  Many 
of the federal programs have bright and eager young clerks who really 
want to help you.

The draw back to many, if not all the programs, is that you have to do 
an enormous amount of documentation on income levels and that most have 
income caps.

I heard awhile back that a group in California sold their project to 
Habitat for Humanity who then took over all the paperwork for them. 
Again the income caps were a problem but many of the group were 
teachers who qualified.

Rob Sandelin
Puget Sound Cohousing Network