PORTLAND, OREGON
BUSINESS NEWS FROM THE FOUR-COUNTY REGION
SEPTEMBER 7, 2012
FOCUS
Affordable housing is getting greener
Affordable housing and sustainable — or
green — development are compatible con­
cepts. Many nonprofits and governmental
housing authorities are incorporating sus­
tainability values into their organizations’
principles and operating objectives.
The U.S. Green Building Council, which
developed the Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design standards — known
to most of us simply as LEED — has been
actively encouraging affordable and sus­
tainable housing through a neighborhood
grant program called LEED for Neighbor­
hood Development, or LEED-ND.
The program started in 2010 with a
grant provided by Bank of America. In
November 2010, the first 10 grantees of the
Affordable Green Neighborhoods Program
each re­
ceived $25,000 plus educational
resources so that their projects could seek
LEED-ND certification.
One of the award recipients is the city
and county of San Francisco’s Sunnydale
project, which is transforming a 50-acre
project originally constructed in 1941 into
a healthy, mixed-income development. The
project incorporates sustainability priori­
ties, such as accessible neighborhood parks
and amenities, as well as more efficient
en­ergy saving homes.
The other nine grantees were spread all
over the country, from Philadelphia to Los
Angeles and various places in between,
including St. Louis, Dallas and Lakewood,
Colo.
There are many nonprofit building orga­
nizations that are building sustainably on
their own. This past October, the USGBC
awarded Clackamas Community Land
Trust’s Juneberry Lane Project with its
national award for Outstanding Afford­
able Housing Project. Juneberry Lane is a
LEED-Platinum certified development of
12 duplex-style townhomes on .73 acres
in Oregon City, Ore. CCLT is a land trust
that owns the land under the
homes and offers a 99-year
ground lease to the homeowners for a nominal amount,
which takes out the cost of
the land, making these homes
affordable.
GUEST
The Clackamas Commu­
COLUMN
nity Land Trust design
team selected high effiMichael R.
ciency gas-fired on-demand
Silvey
water heat­ers coupled with a
hydronic air handler to provide heat,
which consumes no energy until requested. All materi­als used in the project were
as sustainable as possible, including hard
surface floors made of bamboo. Juneberry Lane town-homes also include a
dedicated common area with community
garden beds and a freestanding rainwater
harvester.
The 12 townhomes range from 728 to
1,408 square feet, and the cost of construction was kept to just below $70 a square
foot. Having been completed in the fall of
2010, half of the homes remain unsold,
but there are signs of greater interest as we
head into 2012.
Although the recent Great Recession has
negatively affected the residential housing
market, it has provided some opportunities
for nonprofit entities such as Habitat for
Humanity, which has been able to purchase
fully developed lots at bargain prices when
compared to fully developed lot prices in
2007.
Organizations like Habitat are land bank­
ing when they can. Habitat for Humanity,
unlike land trusts, does not retain any inter­
est in the land but they are able to sell the
homes and land at reduced prices through
a combination of grants and sweat equity.
Another way in which housing nonprofits
are expanding during the recession is as a
result of the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development’s National Stabili­
zation Programs 1 and 2.
Under both of these programs money
was allocated to the states, which in turn
allocated funds to various authorities. Part
of money allocated to Oregon’s Clackamas
County has allowed the land trust to pur­
chase relatively new single-family homes
from foreclosing banks at 10 percent
under the appraisal value, which allows for
a por­tion of the funds to be used for energy
ef­
ficiency upgrades while also making
them affordable through the land trust
model dis­cussed above.
There is an NSP-3 program that provides
down payment, closing costs and minor
re­habilitation financial assistance to home­
owners with household incomes below 120
percent of the area median income. By
contrast, Clackamas County Land Trust
requires incomes to be 80 percent or below
the area median income so that families of
modest means can acquire a single-family
home. Homes purchased with NSP-3 funds
must be foreclosed or abandoned.
Affordable housing is needed more than
ever in the United States. While abandoned
homes are being demolished in communi­
ties to prevent the further blight of neigh­
borhoods, there are some bright spots
cre­ated by HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the U.S. Green Building Coun­cil to build affordable and more
sustainable homes. It is my hope that both
programs will be continued in the future
for the ben­efit of residential neighborhoods
both in Or­egon and around the country.
Michael R. Silvey is a shareholder at Lane
Powell PC law firm, where he focuses his
practice on representing developers,
investors and businesses in all aspects
of commercial real estate. He can be
reached at silveym@lanepowell.com or
503-778-2195.
Reprinted for web use with permission from the Portland Business Journal. ©2012, all rights reserved. Reprinted by Scoop ReprintSource 1-800-767-3263.