HOMESTEAD COMMUNITY LAND TRUST

Homestead Community Land Trust puts affordable homeownership within reach of low- and moderate-income households by through growing our trust of permanently affordable homes. The opportunity to secure a healthy, permanent home, with a fixed housing payment, in a community of opportunity is the foundation upon which people can build a better life for themselves and their children. Affordable, sustainable homeownership is one of the financial capital indicators of economic mobility (Pew Research). \n\nIn King County, the primary barrier to affordable homeownership is a limited supply of income-appropriate homes. As a result, our goals are to:\n\nTo create and preserve a growing portfolio of homes made permanently affordable to low-income people in King County.\n\nLocate homes in areas identified where modest income people are at risk of being priced out (called displacement) as new development occurs.\n\nDevelop the resources to accelerate home production to achieve scale.\n\nPreserve the affordability of homes already in trust so that they give first-time home buying opportunities to multiple households over time.\n\nIntegrate community partnerships and community-led housing initiatives into our development pipeline.\n\nIdentify/cultivate funding resources that enable us to achieve Net Zero energy and other \u201Cdeep green\u201D building standards that traditional housing funding sources do not cover.

We will achieve our goals through the following strategies:\n\nContinuing our successful campaign to secure land at low or no cost from public and charitable sources, and make use of properties considered too small for affordable rental housing.\n\nDoubling the capacity of our staff in both real estate development and homeowner support to build more homes, and to increase services that support homeowners and assure compliance with intended uses. \n\nKeep homes permanently affordable through partnerships with our homebuyers. In exchange for the opportunity to purchase a home at far below market rates, our homeowners agree to restrict the equity gain on their home to a formula so that they can pass on an affordable price to the next income-qualified buyer. They build equity at 1.5% compounded annually, which allows them to build wealth while keeping the home affordable to the next buyer.\n\nExpand our network of partnerships with agencies and lenders that serve communities of color to reach those who have been shut out of homeownership by the legacy of discrimination as well as high cost. Provide homebuyer preparedness to achieve Affirmative Fair Housing objectives.\n\nDevelop a network of content experts through \u201Cleadership circles\u201D that assist in expanding the resources necessary to build new affordable homes with exemplary environmentally sustainable building methods and materials.

Homestead has raised $23 million in grants and public subsidies to create the permanent affordability of the 215 homes in our portfolio. Our staff is experienced in new construction of single-family homes in a variety of configurations: single-family detached, townhomes and row houses, and condominiums. Our experience also includes acquisition and rehabilitation of existing homes. \n\nWe have extensive experience in applying for, receiving and implementing funds from private, city, county, regional, state, federal and national entities, as well as providing ongoing compliance reporting to assure funds serve low-income families. Significant sources of funding have included City of Seattle, King County, State of Washington Housing Trust Fund, Federal Home Loan Bank, SHOP funds through the Community Frameworks organization, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Plymouth Church, and HUD\u2019s Neighborhood Stabilization Program.\n\nOf our 215 homes, 42 have been sold more than once, resulting in 256 families served. These homes rest on 13 acres of land stewarded by our trust. More than half of the homes in our portfolio are (52.3%) are townhomes or condominiums that utilize land efficiently. We emphasize family-sized housing of two or more bedrooms, a housing type underserved by affordable rental developments.\n\nHomestead\u2019s program experience helps us reach underserved populations who experience barriers to homeownership such as:\n\u2022 minority households,\n\u2022 people with disabilities, and \n\u2022 people with language or other perceived cultural barriers.\n\nOf the 256 families served, 55% are households of color; 10% have a disability and 14% are immigrants. 17.2% of households are Asian families for whom English is a second language. 14% have senior citizens in the household; 4% are veterans.\n\nHomestead works with lenders, realtors and escrow partners who have language capacity in Spanish and many Asian languages. We provide for translation during the process of pre-purchase counseling and transaction support at closing.\n\nHomestead advertises its programs in underserved neighborhoods and provides options for individualized one-on-one education and counseling services (with interpretation as needed) to assure that its program is accessible to and utilized by these populations. Homestead partners with Parkview Services to serve the needs of those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.\n\nHomestead\u2019s approach to serving special needs populations such as disabled, seniors and veterans is to provide modification of homes within mixed communities. \n\nWe have achieved a very low rate of foreclosure. Through active stewardship of our homeowners, the number of foreclosures in our portfolio have been limited to two (\u003E1% of our total portfolio).

Homestead has developed a trust of 245 permanently affordable homes, is in active development of six projects in Seattle, Renton and Tukwila, including pilots for deep green building standards including Net Zero energy. In the last four years, we have raised $13 million in public/private investments to build new homes. We have agreements to build new homes on five more properties over the next six years. Through investments in technology, employee development and internal systems, we have increased the efficiency of both our housing development and our compliance and homeowner support processes. Homestead is recognized as a state leader in stewardship of permanently affordable homes, and the community land trust shared equity approach to perpetuating affordability. Affordable homeownership is one of the few anti-displacement strategies actively achieve results. Our 245 homes are located in the Central District, South East Seattle and South West Seattle where displacement risk is highest. Our new housing developments in Renton, Seattle and Tukwila are also located in areas deemed to be at high risk for displacement. Our homes, which remain permanently affordable, mean that there will always be an affordable home for modest income people in these neighborhoods \u2013 homes that keep their owners and their children close to jobs, transit, education and opportunity.
Homestead Community Land Trust seeks to increase our production of permanently affordable homes for ownership significantly in response to the growing crisis of affordability that affects all people with incomes lower than 80% AMI.