I recently received a ray of sunshine via email. Homestead was allocated a $362,500 funding commitment from the Washington State Department of Commerce to help 10 households purchase their first homes through our program. This is particularly welcome news given the constraints on public funding these days and the prospects for further cuts looming like storm clouds on the horizon.

Homestead is committed to making the public and private funding investments in its program go further by remaining flexible and aggressively moving to capture opportunities as they arrive in this unpredictable economy.

We have a growing track record with this approach stretching limited public subsidy to help more families and provide more community benefit. Since 2010, we’ve become 65% more efficient with public funding, allowing us to serve more buyers.

We have several recent examples of this strategy in action. At our Valtera townhomes partnership we worked with Blue Heron LLC to make land donations under 30 new townhomes in West Seattle, reducing the price to our buyers and stretching public subsidy further. This project is 90% sold.

At Wolcott, we stretched our subsidy investment by buying a foreclosed, partially built 15 home development from the FDIC at a discount, and finishing the homes ourselves. The homes are high quality new construction, with 3 and 4 bedrooms, and required less public subsidy to make affordable because of Homestead’s role. Wolcott is now sold out.

In keeping with this strategy, I am delighted to announce that we are launching our Acquisition and Rehab program, where we will acquire homes at a discount from lenders or other sources, fix them up, and translate the savings to our buyers. We will be teaming up with Habitat for Humanity on many of the homes that go through this program, using sweat equity to stretch public investment even further. This is just the latest way that we will add affordable, high quality homes to the land trust, and stretch the public money invested in our program further to serve the greatest number of households in need. In so doing, we keep our rays of sunshine around longer as we head into winter.

Jake Gentry and Suzanne Fossum became new homeowners and members of Homestead in November, 2011. Jake and Suzanne heard about Homestead’s program through their ERA Real Estate agent, Sandy Sargent. When Sandy showed them homes on the market in their price range, they found that most of the homes were foreclosures, short sales, bank owned, and much older that what Homestead offered. After meeting with Lindsey, the Homeownership Director at Homestead, Jake and Suzanne felt that this program had the best interest of homeowners in mind. With Homestead’s program, it was possible to move into a nice, beautiful brand new home.

Jake and Suzanne had encountered some challenges trying to purchase a home in the current market. Their greatest hurdle was getting financing without private mortgage insurance (PMI), which is required on high loan-to-value transactions with minimal down payment. There was no way they would be able to afford a house payment with a costly monthly mortgage insurance premium added on. Another concern was the Seattle real estate market, and possibly getting into a home that was not affordable, or that would lose value on at resale. Without Homestead’s program, Jake thought it might take up to 8-10 years to realize the dream of homeownership. We asked Jake, what is the BEST thing about your new home? Jake replied, “I love that we OWN it! We have ownership in the appearance, the quality and the cleanliness of the home. It has truly been a dream come true and we couldn’t have done it without Homestead and their incredible staff!”

Although Jake works full time and Suzanne attends graduate school full time, three years ago they started up their own amazing non-profit called Orphans to Ambassadors after returning from a trip to Africa.

Jake explained to me a little bit about what their non-profit is all about and how they are helping orphans in Africa:

“Orphans to Ambassadors is a small volunteer based nonprofit that we started 3 years ago after multiple visits to Africa, and seeing the deplorable conditions of some of the rural children’s homes in Tanzania. We came back from Africa with a promise that we would do something to ease the suffering of the kids we visited. The mission of the organization is to support rural orphanages and children’s homes in their quest to become more sustainable and self-sufficient. This means installing solar panels to provide electricity to orphanages, or building chicken coups and vegetable gardens to help provide healthy nutritious foods, sustainably. We implement all sorts of sustainable technologies that will assist the orphanage in becoming more self-sufficient, all while teaching the children how to install, operate and maintain the technologies."

Jake also shared his favorite story about his work in Africa with us:

"After we installed a solar power system, built a vegetable garden and chicken coop, and dug a well for an orphanage in Sierra Leone, the director of the orphanage told us the greatest part of our work was us simply showing up. That just by our appearance, the neglected community orphanage was now the reason that foreigners were coming to the small town of Kamakwie, Sierra Leone. We were the talk of the town, and the orphanage was center stage. The kids loved the solar panels and water well, but spending a week with 3 Americans was the real highlight. Once we left, the orphanage became the only place that ANY children from the community could study at night, because of the solar powered lights. Community kids would never visit the orphanage before this."

You can learn more about Orphans to Ambassadors by visiting their website at www.orphanstoambassadors.org.

Help us celebrate the New Year!

Free registration!  Free transportation!  Meet at Homestead Offices by 7:30am - we’ll return by 5pm.
Friday, January 20th, 2012 - Olympia, WA

Funding is in jeopardy, we need your help more than ever!

Call Stephanie Morrison to register today!  (206) 323-1227 x112

Homestead is very excited to announce that we have received funding to launch an acquisition rehab program for Land Trust buyers in 2012. This program provides opportunities for 20 families to purchase a bank-owned, high-quality remodeled home in the Seattle area, at a significantly discounted price.  This program was launched with support from the Wells Fargo Foundation Priority Markets initiative and the Chase Foundation. The City of Seattle has committed additional funding to bring these homes into the Homestead Community Land Trust and help ensure that the homes remain affordable for current and future families.

Homestead was proud to host the 2011 National Community Land Trust conference in partnership with the Northwest CLT Coalition in Seattle, WA. The four day conference took place at the Red Lion Inn in downtown Seattle, and the weather was clear and beautiful for our 270 participants; some attendees came from as far away as London!

On Monday, October 24th, the conference kicked off with a day long boat trip to the gorgeous San Juan Islands, where attendees toured homes in the Lopez CLT on Lopez Island, and homes in the OPAL CLT on Orcas Island.

On Tuesday, attendees were treated to a tour of Homestead homes on a morning bus trip. The tour, designed to showcase cooperation & partnership, included our Nova and Wolcott properties, the Jefferson Street cottage, and two Habitat for Humanity partnership homes. After the bus tour, attendees joined up with the rest of the conference to participate in various seminars throughout the afternoon. The day ended with our host reception, where conference attendees networked, listened to speakers, and sampled cuisine native to our Pacific Northwest.

The highlight of Wednesday’s events were the morning keynote address by Ron Sims, the CLT Network Annual meeting, and a screening of Gaining Ground, a sequel to the documentary Holding Ground, which was originally shown at the annual CLT conference in 1996.

Thursday, October 27th, was the fourth and final day of the conference. After the seminar & course sessions, attendees got in some last minute networking before screening another short video for the Heritage Lands Project.

Course materials from the conference can be accessed at www.cltnetwork.org.   Thanks to all of our homeowner & board members who helped make this conference a huge success!

Mark your calendars for the 2012 National CLT Conference in Burlington, VT - September 10th 2012!

Southwest Seattle

Homestead has helped 132 modest income households gain stability and security through safe, affordable homeownership.

Remember Homestead in your end of year giving.

Homestead has helped 132 modest income households gain stability and security through safe, affordable homeownership.

Each home in the land trust will help an average of 10 families over its useful life. Your contribution helps us grow and supports thriving equitable neighborhoods.

Please make a donation today.

Alexandra was first introduced to Homestead CLT’s program by her supervisor at work, who sent her an email with a link to some information about our program. Alexandra checked out the link but her perception at the time was that she, a single mom, would not be able to qualify for our program or any program to help her into homeownership. Her past experience with getting down payment assistance indicated to her that there was no help out there for a person in her situation. Due to her experience, she disregarded the info as she felt it just did not apply to her.

“...closing happened very quickly after the pre-approval process. I am altogether happy with the program, and I believe the staff and organization as a whole are very professional”

Alexandra was renting a home during this time when the owner of her home decided to put it on the market. She was faced with the possibility that she would need to vacate her home at any time and she did not have a plan in the works for finding new affordable housing quickly for her family.

Fortunately, about six months later, a friend passed along to Alexandra more information on Homestead CLT’s program. The information came from a real estate agent that worked mostly with the Russian speaking community in the Seattle area. The difference this time was that the agent’s info clearly broke down the numbers, which showed the down payment, mortgage payment, and income requirements, and for the first time Alexandra realized that YES, she could do this! Armed with this new information, Alexandra was motivated to apply to our program – and we were happy to approve her!

Alexandra’s impression of the home-buying experience, in her own words, was “great, and closing happened as quickly as possible after the pre-approval process. I am altogether happy with the program, and I believe the staff and organization as a whole are very professional”. The most difficult part of the process for Alexandra was the fact that the home she was purchasing was bank-owned, which presents more challenges to the closing process than purchasing from a person. She believes that without Homestead CLT, homeownership would still be out of reach, and she would not be able to provide such a stable environment for her family. There was nothing on the market in her price range at the time that would allow her to purchase a home with the same quality in the city of Seattle. Without our program, she believes she would still be renting.

Alexandra and her son Sean are very happy in their home, and she has referred several families to our program since becoming a member of the Homestead Community Land Trust. Alexandra wants to specifically encourage other single parents, who may be experiencing the same challenges she faced, to check out our program and apply. Alexandra is employed with Lutheran Community Services and administers international counseling and community services to refugees and their families, and she believes our program is an important resource for these families; families that have had to flee their home countries and leave everything behind. Homestead CLT can be their first step towards establishing stability and homeownership.

For more information about Lutheran Community Services and their mission, check them out on the web at www.lcsnw.org/seattle/iccs.htm

Southwest Seattle

Kevin & Christa McManamon

Alex Clairmont

Schelly John

Sandra Rabago

Abeba Berhanu & Getu Alemayehu

Paul Bartline

Moiya Callahan & Matthew Rizzuto

Estevan Munoz-Howard & Elisha Ishii

Southeast Seattle

Alexander Banna

Antonio Li

Amy Caster

Thanh Lu & Ngoc Lu

Cindy Luc & Young Chew

Wei Min Huang & Xiu Fang Yu

Kristie Tabadero

Sarah Dean

Sherrie Belt & Darius Hart

Anitra Jones

Howard Clark

Meti Duressa & Samuel Borsamo

Northwest Seattle

Quynh Tu

Heather Bouzek & Ian Baker

Thomas Taylor

Yeong Ha

Northeast Seattle

Dereje Muhammed &

Alemeshet Woldeyohanes