Ideas on Affordable Housing and a New Community Center in Garberville

We have had many conversations over two years that center on three great themes:

**what populations can our housing serve?
**what structure of ownership and development will serve best?
**what bio-regionally appropriate, energy producing, green and sustainable mixed-use housing and public amenities can our community conceive and achieve? How much outside support is needed for it, as the ideal of localization grows?

POPULATIONS TO BE SERVED

Young families

This group includes teachers who are increasingly priced out of living in our district where they work, with consequent loss of program vitality as well as enrollment. ‘Starter homes’ can be made affordable for purchase by teachers with children, and other middle-income families, by building row homes with unfinished second floors. The opportunity for ‘sweat equity’ will take tens of thousands of dollars off the purchase price of modern, ‘smart growth’ urban-infill style green housing. Sustainable housing can be affordable if we allow each family to make its own choices on how to finish their homes. Such homes can be built for purchase for less, perhaps significantly less, than $300,000. The school board could reserve some homes exclusively for teachers and employees, depending on structures discussed below.

Workers

While families flourish in owned homes, workers may prefer apartments. The Danco Redway development is an example of ‘workforce housing’ dedicated to serving those whose incomes are 80 percent of the county average, i.e., $17,500 to $35,500 of annual family income. Danco has proposed building 30 units or more of such housing at the Sprowel Creek site, gifting the school building to the community, and paying the School Board $600,000 for the land.

Seniors

We have two distinct elder groups of interest, those who require public assistance for housing and those whose needs can be met by market construction. Subsidized senior housing can be built using proven local expertise, but must be of minimum efficient size of 20 to 30 units. Funding is available but slow in coming. Finished units are affordable on Social Security income, and can be managed, as the Cedar Street apartments are, by professional companies hiring locally.

The Senior Co-housing Group would like to provide more expensive quarters for owner-occupants with some shared amenities such as guest quarters, garden and open space, perhaps shared kitchen and dining areas.

The drift of recent conversation has been towards subsidized rather than market-driven co-housing on the Sprowel Creek site because they could be a bit more densely built on the small acreage at less expense. A design consisting only of elder housing with subsidized and market-rate wings is possible, but might benefit from less community buy-in than more diverse schemes.

 

GOALS

**housing for local populations in need of diverse types to address needs of several groups.

**green, sustainable, low embedded energy and net energy-producing residences to interest residents, visitors, and the community at large.

**community animation and communal assets to be shared by residents and the public, such as a swimming pool, performance stage, and open park space.

**distinguished architecture and design that evolves an inspiring housing model in our time of diminishing resources.

** drawing visitors off the freeway and offering them a walkable destination, to contribute in multiple ways to our local economy.

**public title for the school building, to become a community center and communal landmark in the new housing community. The old school will provide design orientation for the developments behind it and synergize with the new community.

 

DEVELOPMENT STRUCTURES

The first development choice we must make is to decide if the developer is a non-profit such as SHARE or Rotary or SHWT; or a for-profit LLC driven by investors expecting profit; or the school district acting as its own developer.

Non-profit developer

If our entire development were to be subsidized housing paid for with government grants, a non-profit management model might work well, as seen at Cedar Street where 20 units were built (for profit) by Danco and are now managed by an Oakland company with a local manager. Combining subsidized and market-rate housing is possible but tricky without a clear funding stream for the market construction.

For-profit LLC

A Limited Liability Corporation would solicit investors seeking profit to finance development. This is the standard model for market-rate housing, and even large public builders such as Danco are LLCs that build profit into each subsidized unit they develop. The problem with this model is simple: we can think of title to our school building as the ‘profit’ of our whole enterprise. If the building is to be carried by developments behind it, it’s difficult to assign additional moneys to investors while keeping prices affordable for occupants.

School District as Developer

The school district could create a committee, or partner with a non-profit or LLC, to develop its property, as has been done by districts in various ways across the country. The great advantage of this structure is that the District already owns the land, so financing is greatly simplified and discounted. A volunteer board overseeing a professional project director could manage development without additional burden on the school board or staff. Such a structure would guarantee maximum discretion in homeowner selection, so that teachers and staff could be offered local housing without difficulty. It could provide property income to the district in perpetuity, and would lower development financing costs. It assures local control over decision-making. But it puts risk for development on the District. The payback for assuming risk is greater profit potential and lower costs, hence less expensive housing. There are many varieties of this design currently implemented and under way.

This summary is a work in progress, offered so that we continue our discussions ‘on the same page.’ Please share your thoughts and corrections with me so that mutual understandings will continue to be enriched in our work together for ever-improving community.

Charley Custer
SHARE chair