Cohousing-L Mailing List: Affordable Cohousing Partnering with Habitat for Humanity

[Thomas Lofft (tlofft]

Janet Kelly's post abiout HFH is very interesting, because I've managed very 
affordable developments for HFH and also developed Liberty Village Cohousing in 
Maryland, which came out at a much higher price scale.

 

Now Liberty Village is getting ready to build another ten units and there is 
some community interest in the possibility of partnering with HFH to generate 
more affordable cohousing homes for a couple/few families.  Of course, all the 
general HFH policies are directed by the local HFH chapter, but I'm interested 
in a few results from other commmunities that have successfully partnered with 
Habitat for Humanity or otherwise developed designated affordable units.

 

1. COMMUNITY DESIGN: Did you come to agreement on a community design acceptable 
to HFH or did HFH (or the affordability police) need to develop another design 
ethic to facilitate their owner and volunteer built model?  How did the 
community finally achieve design consensus?

 

2. COMMUNITY COVENANTS & BYLAWS: Were there any conflicts with the original 
covenants or bylaws of the community?  How was consensus achieved? 

 

3. COMMUNITY ASSESSMENTS:  Typically, assessments may be at a higher scale for 
the common house and other facility operations and maintenance, repair and 
replacements, insurance, etc.  Was there any negotiation over the standard 
assessment for the "affordable" units or was a two level or income-scaled 
assessment developed? 

 

4. AFFORDABLE UNITS FOR OWNERSHIP OR RENTAL?:  Did the affordable units all 
become owner or tenant occupied?  How did this affect community support?  

 

5. AFFORDABLE RESIDENT/OWNER SELECTION:  Did the Community have substantive 
participation in the selection or did HFH dictate the selection process?  How 
did the community facilitate assimilation?

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

Tom Lofft

Liberty Village, MD

 

 

Janet Kelly at Arboretum Cohousing posted:


Thank you for your detailed and measured response, Diana.

Here at Arboretum Cohousing we have 6 affordable units, including two units
built by Habitat for Humanity.  All of them were snapped up, and we had
multiple applicants for many units.  We have been one of the few
"developers" in Madison to actively market and sell our affordable units --
most for-profit developers tried hard to avoid Madison's "inclusionary
zoning" requirements.

Our units in general did not end up to be as affordable as we had initially
hoped, given the high costs of urban in-fill construction.  We had no profit
included in the purchase price of the units, just the costs of
construction.  I suspect this is the same for most cohousing communities.

Janet Kelly
Arboretum Cohousing
Madison Wisconsin
janetkelly28 [at] gmail.com
http://arboretumcohousing.org

-- 
Janet Kelly
255-7277(w); 280-9617(h); 333-8338(cell)




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