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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (April 15, 2011)
4 street roots April 15, 2011 Casey and Angela B aker in their yard. B ehind them is their home, m ade affordable P r o M d Zzzw¿/ Trust program. Hie American Dream — redux BY STACY BROWNHILL S T A FF W R IT E R "F TT Then Sakorya Avery first heard of the l / l / nonprofit Proud Ground in 2005, V V then called Portland Community Land Trust, she hesitated. Twice she had already looked into buying a home, but the sky-high market resigned Avery to living in Section 8 Housing at $825 per month. She took the plunge, and six years later, the 35-year-old teaching assistant and mother of four owns her own 2,300 square foot home in Southeast Portland, pays $750 per month in mortgage payments, and sings the praises of Proud Ground and homeownership. Proud Ground is one of 230 community land trusts (CLTs) nationwide — nonprofits born out of soaring home prices and shrinking urban space over the last thirty years, designed specifically to provide stable land and housing to those who would otherwise be denied. Simply put, Proud Ground acquires relatively modern, renovated homes and the land beneath them, and sells the homes heavily subsidized (about $60,000 to $100,000 under the market rate) to people hankering to own a home. The twist? To keep the home affordable for future generations, the home’s appreciation is limited. “A family who buys their home through Proud Ground, earning $25,000 to $40,000, will pay close to what they pay in rent,” says Proud Ground executive director Jesse Beason, “but they will also pass on the opportunity to another family if or when they ever sell.” Beason’s nonprofit has not only helped more than 130 families own homes; the staff of eight is also laying the foundation to make homeownership in Portland affordable 100 years from now. Shared equity is the buzzword for this idea, one that’s rapidly gaining popularity. “Folks have woken up and realized, especially on the policy level, that there must be better ways to manage the bousing market,” says Roger Lewis, executive director of the National Community Land Trust Network. ’ Remember what “the most significant risk to our economy” was in 2007, according to the Secretary of the Treasury? It was the market-rate houses as their next home7 according to a Burlington, Vermont CLT study. Like Avery, Baker admits she had her doubts when she first heard of Proud Ground. The 32-year-old mother of three and her family had lived in seven rentals aver The skinny on owning a Proud Ground home Reluctant renters, you may be eligible for a Proud Ground home right now. Here’s the laundry list of general requirements for owning a Proud Ground home: "Community land trusts don't (CI'T's)want to lit a square peg in a round hole, and if yon can buy at m arket rate, we say go ahead. But CLT's do have a really valuable approach to community and they are sustainable for generations." bursting housing bubble, which dropped one year later to the lowest prices in history. “Houses are sold like they’re guaranteed to appreciate,” says Beason, “but they’re n o t” Proud Ground and other CLT homes have a mortgage foreclosure roughly eight times below the national average, according to a Vanderbilt University study. “Families are returning to the value of a home as a shelter,” says Lewis. “Yes, people still perceive a home as an investment, but it’s also the American dream to raise your family in your own home.” Does the fact that they won’t earn equity on their homes bother Proud Ground homeowners like Sakorya Avery or Angela and Gasey Baker? Not at all. “Our goal was never to see a home as an investment; says Angela Baker. “Our goal was to have a yard where our kids could play and out family could come together.” “You have to crawl before you can walk,” says Avery, who views Proud Ground as a stepping-stone for buying another home eventually. Statistically, she probably will. • Seventy-five percent of families who sell their shared equity homes go on to buy eight years before learning about Proud Ground, and Baker “never imagined she could afford to own a home in Portland.” Despite the couple’s affection for Portland’s urban culture and Casey’s rewarding job as a math teacher with the Native American Youth Family Center (NAYA), the Bakers were struggling to justify living in a more expensive city on a lower paycheck after moving to Portland from Siletz, Oregon in 2008. Then in 2009, the Bakers applied for a dual grant from Proud Ground and NAYA that let them purchase a 2,300 square foot house on a quarter-acre piece of land in Northeast Portland. Now, they pay less on their mortgage than they did in rent, their kids enjoy the stability of a permanent neighborhood, and “it feels great knowing we don’t need to move again,” says Baker. And, with their quarter acre of land, the Bakers donated 1,400 pounds of organic produce to Birch Community Services in 2010. “The land trust was the reason we could be homeowners, so we feel a greater See DREAM, page 5 You should be a first-time homebuyer (no countryside manors on the side). Your total household income should be at or below 80% of the rest of Portland. If you’re a family of three, for example, your total annual household income should be below $51,300. (Don’t go survey the whole city’s income. There’s a chart on the website). You should make a minimum of $20,000 annually (there are mortgage payments, after all). You should have a good credit record (i.e. no recent bankruptcies). You shouldn’t be spending more than 40% of your income on debt (a monthly debt of more than $300 is generally a deal-breaker). You should have proof of steady employment (ah, the Portland job market). You should have $2,000 to $3,000 saved up for repairs (wear-and-tear happens to even the best houses). Check out the Proud Ground website at www.proudground.org or call 503-459-0293 to learn more.
