A Town housing alternative

— Margaret Thatcher

Dan Armland’s family had been around so long it was sometimes difficult for newcomers to Ma Donner to know where his farm property ended and the town’s boundary began. The ballfield on which generations of kids had grown up learning baseball and teamwork as well as playing frisbee fetch with their dogs was his family’s.

So Mayor Herman Rays was not surprised when Armland called and asked to meet him for coffee at the Ma Donner Coffee Company. He was surprised when Dan told him, putting his scone back on the plate, that the Armland family wanted to sell the ballfield property to the Town.

“We hope the Town will maintain,” but Rays was shaking his head before the sentence was finished.

“We can’t afford to keep it as a park, Dan,” Rays interrupted. “Part of it set aside yes, but we have to sell it in order to buy it.”

“My family doesn’t want market prices homes,” Armland replied. “The Town needs starter homes that my farmhand and your clerk can buy. How else will they be able to live where they work?”

A light bulb turned on over Rays’ head. “Judi Mitchell, the housing land trust director. She builds duplexes and holds the price down by keeping ownership of the land.”

Rays gulped his coffee. “You need $660,000. The land trust can design an 18 structure campus, a mix of duplexes and starter homes. They can up the selling price by $35,000 to recoup the Town’s initial purchase. With land trust subsidies and financing the homes will sell for under $300,000. Think of it: new homes young people can afford in Ma Donner. That will be unique in the county.”

Armland grinned. “The county has no gumption, much less a policy, and certainly no money either for planning or acting to make housing affordable. The state is no better and the federal government has completely abdicated responsibility for getting working people into homes. They all say the market will take care of it. Ha! Market forces. That means people from Seattle and California come up with oodles of cash and force housing prices up and force people to live in Silty Woody and commute in. That is no way to get our kids to raise their families here. At market prices our neighbors cannot compete. They cannot make the down payment. They couldn’t pay those mortgages.”

“This calls for outside the box thinking, Dan,” Rays agreed. “The Town doesn’t have the reserves or the capital to maintain the ballfield. But more important than sectioning off a corner of it for a park is to develop housing that maintains Ma Donner for the next generation of Ma Donnerites. Providing homes for 18 area families is only a start. Your two acre parcel is the only chance to change our future, to keep Ma Donner local, in the family so to speak. This is not a once in a generation opportunity but a once in a lifetime chance. There is not another piece of property in town that offers this potential.”

“And the town council?” Armland raised an eyebrow. Rays nodded. “Some of them will support it, some will fight it and some will need to be convinced. I will have our administrator, Tom Scottus, figure out the financing. If the land trust agrees that the Town can recover its initial outlay by levying a duty on the home price that over time pays the Town’s back, then we are really providing a short term loan to invest in keeping our community unified, one generation to another.”

Armland looked into the street. “I am reminded of Tom Paine’s words, written to bolster Washington’s army: ‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.’ Every person in Ma Donner will thank you for making a chance for their familiy’s future to remain in the town they love.”

Rays looked past the streetscape into the future. “But it will only be 18 homes. That is half of one high school graduating class. How can we possibly sustain affordability for our citizens? This is just a start, and a small one at that.”