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.