Whitefish agency tells City Council that 2-year plan includes grant funding for 12 deed-restricted homes

The Daily Inter Lake

The Whitefish Housing Authority is embarking on a two-year housing plan that will include the resort town's first batch of deed-restricted homes and a community land trust to hold land for affordable housing.

Housing Authority Director SueAnn Grogan briefed the City Council at a work session Tuesday, noting that the housing board expects to formally adopt the plan by early spring.

Grant funding is pending for 12 deed-restricted units, including two homes at Granite Ridge on Wisconsin Avenue, two at Aspen Grove on Colorado Avenue and three at the intersection of Second Street and Armory Road. Five of the units will be buyer-initiated homes, which allow qualified buyers to find a home that meets with Housing Authority approval.

Deed-restricted homes have resale controls to keep them affordable, Grogan said. When a person wants to resell a home, the price is set according to a formula that allows for some small amount of appreciation, though not the entire windfall that a market-rate real-estate investment would provide.

Grogan asked the city for money to update a housing study that provides essential demographic and real-estate information needed to keep Whitefish's affordable-housing programs rolling.

"Whitefish Housing Authority can't afford to do it," she said, citing $52,000 in federal cuts from the housing board's budget during the past year.

The existing housing study was done for $7,000 a few years ago, but Grogan estimated it may cost as much as $25,000 to get the kind of extensive study that would best help Whitefish's housing programs.

The council suggested that Grogan meet with Whitefish Planning Director Bob Horne to determine the scope of the study and then advertise for proposals. Once the council reviews the proposals it will decide how to proceed with funding.

An updated housing study would give the city the nexus to ask for mandatory inclusionary zoning that would require developers to provide affordable housing or cash in lieu of housing units. A voluntary program has enabled the Housing Authority to purchase several affordable homes and condominium units.

A year ago the council increased the cash-in-lieu payment from $3,000 to $6,000 a unit in a subdivision, and there was discussion about raising it even more this year to keep up with escalating real-estate prices.

There's been some confusion about tracking the number of condominium units.

"Condos don't go through final plat, so we missed The Views [a condominium project in south Whitefish]," she said. "We're working on 10 [affordable] units there, but we're coming in after the fact."

THE HOUSING Authority aims to have a community land trust in place by 2008. A land trust would control housing costs by permanently limiting land costs and locking in subsidies.

Sometimes community land trusts buy undeveloped land and arrange to have new homes built on the land. Sometimes they buy land and buildings together, but the land is held permanently. When land-trust homeowners sell their homes, a land-lease agreement gives the trust the right to buy each home back for an amount determined by the trust's resale formula.

"Over the next five years we want to build 12 homes a year" within the land trust, Grogan said.

If a home were built now for $225,000, figuring 9 percent appreciation, it would be worth $2.1 million in 25 years, she said, adding that real-estate appreciation currently is 21 percent annually in Whitefish.

No decisions have been made about where land-trust property might be located, but Grogan has her eye on a piece of city-owned land on Railway Street that could kick off the program.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by

e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com