Saturday, June 30, 2007

More small houses...

Here's a link to an article in today's SF Chronicle about a fellow who lives in a 250 square foot house in Pacifica: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/30/HOG5IQMK6I1.DTL.  It's not an apartment, a condo, a trailer or a pre-fab unit.  It's not a second unit, it sits on its own lot and there are no shared walls.  It's cozy, but well designed and functional.  
 
This is a great example of what can be done with a small lot.  It shows that an SRO (single resident occupancy) unit doesn't have to be an apartment.  It also demonstrates the relationship between size and affordability, as the owner bought the house for $101,000 in 1999 -- an amazing price for Pacifica, or anywhere in the Bay Area for that matter.




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Monday, June 11, 2007

Home Dreams Fading

- Sonoma Index-Tribune 5/22/07

Sonoma Valley homes out of reach

This is the second in a three-part series on the Valley's housing crisis.

The numbers tell the story.

As of the 2000 census, approximately 64 out of every 100 Sonoma County households owned their home. At today's prices, only seven out of 100 families could afford to make the same purchase, according to Jim Leddy, president of the Sonoma County Housing Coalition.

"What's unique about our era right now is moderate-income buyers are put in same position as low-income were a decade ago," said John Lowry of Burbank Housing Development Corp., a company that specializes in low-income housing.

The much-publicized downturn in Northern California real estate prices may not offer much local relief. According to the bulletin Sonoma County Real Estate Trends, the median price for a single-family home declined in 2006 but only to $580,000. There was a similar drop in the price of a condominium unit - to $363,000.

Real estate statistics compiled for the Valley by Sonoma's Trinity Episcopal Church pegged the median housing price in the City of Sonoma at $689,000 and the price in the Springs at $575,000 in 2004. The city's Web site reports a median price of $618,000 for the whole Valley in 2005.

Today's current multiple listings for the Valley, posted online by Frank Howard Allen Realtors, show only two homes priced at less than $395,000, an older home in El Verano and a fixer-upper in Agua Caliente. Another six cost just under $400,000. Eight more are priced between $400,000 and $475,000. The rest range from $475,000 into the millions.

Of the condominium units, three range between $259,000 and $299,999; another six between $319,000 and $399,900. The rest begin at $409,000 and go up from there.

"Who can buy?" Leddy asked. "You're not making $15 an hour if you're able to afford that kind of house."

One local solution has been sweat equity housing, a concept in which low- or moderate- income owners substitute 30 hours of building labor a week for a cash down payment and qualify for 30-year loans from the California Housing Financial Agency of 3 to 5.5 percent, depending on income. Additional financing comes from city and county partnerships with private developers, who oversee the building process.

"Wild Flower is the latest one. It was finished about a month and a half ago," said City Councilmember Ken Brown. "It's absolutely, totally awesome. If somebody wasn't going to swing a hammer they could order paint, or order materials, or go for deliveries. There's a job for everybody."

Lowry, who worked on the partnership between Burbank and the city, agreed.

"They do a lot of the work: carpentry, concrete, windows, doors, cabinets, landscaping, cleanup ... It can take a year to build a house. They work as a group, not just on their own home. It's mutual self-help housing."

Even the disabled, Lowry said, have jobs to do or arrange to have their hours filled by volunteer friends and family members. Over the past few years, Burbank has organized construction of three sweat-equity housing developments: Wild Flower in the city with 34 units on Napa Road, Via Hermosa in the Springs north of Verano Avenue with 27 small stucco detached houses or duplexes and Encinas Del Verano in El Verano with 12 units on El NiƱo Court. Those 73 homes, however, don't begin to resolve the housing shortage.

"We do a little advertising and typically get three times as many interested (as there are houses)," Lowry said. After determining who is truly eligible and able to put in what amounts to a second job, the company holds a lottery to determine who will have the opportunity.

"We could build three times what we've done," he said. "The demand is tremendous for it. I'll bet we could do 6,000 in the county; 300 in the Valley over time. People want to own a home and they'll work hard to get it."

There are also long waiting lists for more conventional housing reserved for low- and moderate-income buyers. The 13 houses at Casa Primera are gone. So are the 16 homes at Marcy Court, the 18 at Palm Court, and the 34 homes at the Sonoma Commons. City ordinances require a certain percentage of the units in a major housing development be reserved for low- or moderate-income buyers, but those homes, too, disappear almost as fast as they're built.

"It's seems like there's definitely more demand than there is product," said one city staffer. "Two or three times a week somebody comes in looking for units."

The best ownership hope for many lower-income residents is still a mobile unit in a trailer park. So far, however, there is nothing preventing a park owner from subdividing the property into for-sale spaces. While mobile owners can't be forced to move, only low-income tenants remain under rent control protection after subdivision. So far, there is no law preventing market-rate increases for moderate income tenants.

Similarly, low-income - but not moderate-income - renters may qualify for help in purchasing the land under their mobile homes through the state's Mobile Home Park Resident Ownership Program. The program can finance from 50 to 95 percent of the purchase cost through a 30-year 3 percent loan and sometimes offers no-down-payment and deferred-payment options.

Another possibility, offered by Resident Owned Parks Inc., involves purchase of the entire park by the nonprofit company, which would then own and operate it. Space rentals would be kept low, the company promises, and used to pay off the purchase loans. After the loans are paid off in full, both ownership and management responsibility would be transferred to a "nonprofit homeowners association."

There appears to be nothing guaranteeing the homes eventually sold would be reserved for low- or moderate-income people. A moratorium on mobile-home park conversion is on the June agenda of the Sonoma City Council.






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