Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: affordable cohousing, not "gated"

[Kay Argyle (Kay.Argyle]

" 'The only sticking point was that they had to own
the land underneath the house - shares don't work for them.'
"This is the kind of requirement/restriction that is present in all the  
subsidy programs that I know of."

Wasatch Commons' community's land is owned as "undivided" shares; our five
income-qualified units are a fourplex and half of a duplex (of which the
other half is a market-rate unit). The units were financed through Utah
Housing Corp.'s CROWN program, which is a rent-to-own program based on
federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits.

The majority of homes in the program are detached single-family houses,
where the land would indeed be individually owned. I don't know if ours are
the only exception. Getting an exception was probably made easier by several
factors: the CROWN program is UHC's own baby, so it could decide to make an
exception; we had a foot in the door in the form of a member's brother who
worked for UHC and could steer us through the application process; and the
program was fairly new when we applied, so the way things were usually done
hadn't become the only way they could be done. 

We also got an exception to UHC's waiting list policies. Initially this was
merely that people on the waiting list could turn our units down without
losing their place on the list (to avoid our getting someone who regarded
the community as the unit's worst drawback). After several people had
declined the units, UHC quit sending us candidates; instead they give
preference for the units to candidates that we send them (who still have to
qualify by the usual rules).

Kay A
Wasatch Commons
Salt Lake City
 

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