More Flagstaff, AZ townhouses for $160K
The recent groundbreaking for the first phase of the Izabel Homes project signals a new milestone for the city-run community land trust.
In a partnership with local builder Loven Contracting, Flagstaff officials expect to have a total of 16 homes added to the land trust by 2015, offering one of the only paths to home ownership for local families making no more than 80 percent of the area median income. For a family of four, that would mean those making less than $49,200 annually would qualify.
Community Housing Manager Sarah Darr said the groundbreaking was a huge step forward for the community land trust, which was formed by the Flagstaff City Council in 2006. The Izabel units will be the first permanently deeded, affordable homes to be built specifically with the land trust in mind.
The city will be able to price each home between $160,000 and $180,000, with the city retaining ownership of the land and allowing the homeowner to purchase only the house itself. Read the rest of this page »
Downsizing
California residents resort to mini-apartments to live in hot areas
By Roger Vincent
McClatchy News Service
LOS ANGELES — Timm Freeman’s Santa Monica apartment has 17-foot ceilings, granite countertops and collector guitars hanging on the wall.
He’s got a built-in microwave, dishwasher and central air conditioning.
All in 350 square feet.
Freeman’s coffee table is also his dining table. His desk is three steps from his sitting room. And three paces from his stove.
“Everything is within three steps of the next thing,” said Freeman, 40, a graphic designer.
Southern California, meet the Manhattan-sized mini-apartment. In a region known for its sprawl, diminutive dwellings are finding a toehold among renters who couldn’t otherwise afford to live in choice neighborhoods. Read the rest of this page »
There’s No Place Like Home
There’s no place like home
Communities work to meet workforce housing standards
By Casey Farrar
Sentinel Staff
Housing Commission Workshop
Please join us for New Hampshire’s first Housing Commission Workshop, Thursday, May 13, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Room 101 Putnam Science Center, Keene State College, Keene.
Partners: Heading for Home, Southwest Region Planning Commission, New Hampshire Housing
Panelists: From the Hanover Affordable Housing Commission, Len Cadwallader, Executive Director, Vital Communities, White River Junction, VT. From NH Housing, George Reagan, Administrator, Housing Awareness Program and Ben Frost, Director of Public Affairs.
The panelists will present a variety of information that will give participants a better understanding of how a community can benefit by the establishment of a local housing commission. The first half of the program will include lessons learned in creating a housing commission by the Hanover Affordable Housing Commission, an overview of the new Housing Commission Workbook developed by New Hampshire Housing and a summary of potential legal and tax implications for municipalities. The second half of the program will be a facilitated question and answer session focused on the formation of a housing commission.
Registration: There will be a buffet at 5:30 p.m. with the program from 6-7:30 p.m. There is no charge to attend this workshop, but pre-registration is required. To register for this event or for additional information, please contact Lisa Murphy at (603) 357-0557, lmurphy@swrpc.org or Susy Thielen of Heading for Home at susyt@headingforhome.org. Please register no later than 5:00 p.m., May 11, 2010.
Affordable housing critical to future of Keene
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Saturday, November 07, 2009
Picture a middle school dance. Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other, everyone too shy to make the first move onto the gym-turned-dance floor.
In a sense, the relationship between young professionals and their elder counterparts can be thought of the same way.
Either side may want to participate in community initiatives, but their involvement won’t happen without a first step. Or: until somebody walks across that room, nobody dances.
Talk of how to take those first steps — and why they are important — happened Friday morning in Keene, at an annual Business Leaders Breakfast sponsored by Heading for Home, the Monadnock Region’s housing coalition.
Though the discussion hinged on the economic necessity of young professionals, much of it also centered on the necessity of their having affordable housing — something a community needs for a vibrant workforce to flourish in the first place, event participants said. Read the rest of this page »
Region sees housing decline, Study: Workforce stock is shrinking
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Thursday, April 16, 2009
It’s not often that a tax map is so shocking it makes people gasp.
But when those maps show that in six years more than half of Keene’s workforce housing — housing stock that employed people in low- and middle-income brackets can afford — simply disappeared, otherwise mundane tax maps become unbelievable.
Put simply, “It’s a pretty significant decrease,” said Torin Hjelmstad, one of three Keene State College geography students responsible for the map, one part of a workforce housing study titled “May the Force be with you: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region.”
Hjelmstad, along with students Sarah Forler and Elizabeth Kane, presented the report to the public Wednesday night at Bentley Commons in Keene. Read the rest of this page »
May the Force be with You: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region
On April 15, 2009, Heading for Home and the Keene State Department of Geography presented the report, “May the Force be with You: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region,” an original study comparing the changes in workforce housing availability in the Monadnock Region in 2001 and 2008.
Homes key to growth of jobs, Businesses need workforce housing
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Susan R. Thielen has heard the myths.
When people hear “workforce housing,” they picture derelict trailers, imagine an influx of children and cry out that such a move will cost them more in property tax dollars.
It’s all part of what Thielen, coordinator of Keene’s workforce housing coalition Heading for Home, calls workforce housing’s “image problem.”
“(People) want the younger people, they want the workforce, they want the viable tax base,” she said. “But they just don’t want their neighborhood to change.”
Whether towns like it or not, that change has come, in the form of a new workforce housing law, passed last year and set to take effect this July. Read the rest of this page »
Towns confused over requirements
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Monday, February 02, 2009
New Hampshire’s workforce housing law, passed this summer, has a grand goal: To fight the state’s affordable-housing shortage, and in turn create a productive, thriving workforce that can afford to live where it works.
Despite this lofty goal, the law — set to take effect in July — has caused communities across New Hampshire to struggle with meeting its web of new requirements.
“The law is difficult for communities to understand and comply with,” said Bruce D. Simpson, chairman of Dublin’s planning board.
To give these communities time to figure out what to do, state Rep. Peter R. Leishman recently helped sponsor a bill to delay the law for a year, until July 2010.
The Peterborough Democrat said he decided to introduce the bill after receiving a call from town officials in Sharon.
“They were totally overwhelmed by the (workforce housing law) due to their size and lack of resources,” he said.
“(They) didn’t feel they could get things together before July of this year.”
The law requires towns to ensure that land-use ordinances and regulations “provide reasonable and realistic opportunities for the development of workforce housing.” Read the rest of this page »
More discounted housing offered
The Village at University Heights (Flagstaff, AZ) will have 10 two-bedroom condos priced as low as $149,000 for residents earning no more than $73,750 a year.
By J. FERGUSON
Arizona Sun Staff Reporter
Monday, October 06, 2008
Another local Flagstaff developer has answered the call from the community for more affordable housing options.
John Crowley has recently lowered the price of nearly 5 percent of his condo conversion units at The Village at University Heights by $30,000 apiece to help locals buy their first home. Crowley has created 10 permanently affordable units in the former apartment complex for Flagstaff residents earning between 80 and 125 percent of the area median income, which is currently about $58,000 for a family of four.
That means households earning between roughly $46,400 and $73,750 would qualify for Crowley’s condos.
Read the rest of this page »