By Janice Lengenfelder / Herald Forum
Here are two facts widely reported recently: In Snohomish County affordable housing has become almost non-existent; homelessness continues to increase.
Facts less widely reported: Snohomish County expects growth of 300,000 new residents over the next 20 years. The City of Snohomish’s assignment is to make room for 2,500 of these newcomers.
It is worth noting that within the city of Snohomish there are sizable land parcels available for housing and commercial redevelopment, which have not attracted developers for years now. Because land has become so expensive within our city limits developers building affordable housing risk a loss or an inadequate return on their investment.
Some of these land parcels are taxpayer underwritten; that is, publicly owned. We, the public, in a sense, own this land. Yes, it was managed for us, by us, (because government is essentially us) for a specific purpose, but when that purpose is no longer served; the land becomes available for redevelopment. I mention Snohomish but it seems likely this situation exists in more locales of Snohomish County’s urban areas.
There are solutions that would pave the way to appropriately planned affordable housing, with guarantees that housing remains affordable in perpetuity. Most examples are known as Community land trusts, where members of the community own the land, hold it in trust, and contract with developers to build housing and commercial spaces which are then sold or rented to clients. In the case of a sale, the buyer owns the building, the trust leases the land to the buyer. Restrictions are frequently placed on the deed. Means testing for Pprospective buyers may be one restriction; limiting price appreciation of the building, maintaining its affordability in perpetuity may be another. Public land trusts, where a governmental entity (again, we the people) owns the land are rarer, but likely not non-existent.
Burlington, Vt., is a center of Community Land Trust work, supported by Burlington Associates, publishing materials that help such land trusts nationwide.
Closer to home, there are land trusts in the Methow Valley for both land conservancy and affordable housing. The Admiral Church in West Seattle has created a trust for an affordable housing community on their legacy property that is currently in planning stage. Bainbridge Island has Housing Resources Bainbridge. On its website Housing Resources speaks to being one of 250 such trust organizations nationwide. The Tulalip Reservation is partially federal trust land.
If you build on a portion of the 93,000 acres of the Irvine, Calif., Ranch, now the Irvine Corporation, which encompasses the city of Irvine and parts of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Tustin, Orange and Anaheim, you build on leased land. This has allowed the Irvine Corporation to set aside land for trust development of means tested, affordable housing over the past 50 years.
One thing is clear: housing trusts, whether public or private, are remarkably configurable. They can be scaled to fit the needs of the population and help direct development. They require community and governmental support, participation and investment. The creation of a housing trust can be undertaken by a public or private entity of just about any size.
Community land trusts support local businesses both directly and indirectly. By eliminating the cost of land from the calculus of the developer; there should be more interest in building. Building owners and new residents contribute to their community’s tax base. The list of positives is long.
They may not be the whole answer but community land trusts should get serious consideration as contributing focused solutions to the scarcity of affordable housing in urban areas.
Janice Lengenfelder lives in Snohomish.
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