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Matthei Place; Permanent Affordability
in the heart of Fairhaven
Kulshan Community Land Trust, with the support and encouragement of the City of Bellingham, will be developing a subdivision application for a fourteen home project on a site now owned by KulshanCLT at 15th Street and Harris Avenue in south Bellingham. The homes at Matthei Place will be sold to households at or below eighty percent of the area median income, using down payment assistance from public and private sources. Using the classic CLT ground lease approach, KulshanCLT and the homeowners will work together to assure the homes will be affordable for future low- to moderate-income homebuyers while, at the same time, providing homeowners a reasonable rate of return on their investments.
As a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) serving Whatcom County, KulshanCLT envisions a place with homes people can afford to own, close to where they work, at whatever their wages might be. We see CLT homes scattered gracefully in every neighborhood throughout every urban growth area. By using the CLT approach, KulshanCLT can insure that the community's investment will continue working for the community in the form of homes that people can afford, with no on-going or future subsidy required, regardless of the escalating prices of surrounding homes.
These ideas gained significant local traction in 2004. In November the Bellingham City Council passed an ordinance that will allow this project to become a showcase of affordable and sustainable urban infill development. The ordinance creates a Demonstration Program for Innovative Permanently Affordable Homeownership Projects and sets the criteria for such projects to request the waiver of regulations and development standards. The intent is to demonstrate that small, quality homes on small lots can be a welcome addition to any neighborhood. KulshanCLT is proud of that support and intends to capitalize on the goodwill by developing an award-winning project.
The homes in this development will include a combination of six single family detached and eight zero lot line homes. Homes will be one, two and three bedroom units with clustered off-street parking and architectural characteristics consistent with the surrounding neighborhood homes. The size of homes will range from a 400 square foot studio about a community space, to the 1,200 square foot three bedroom homes. The one bedroom homes will be roughly 750 square feet and the two bedrooms homes will range from roughly 850 to 1050 square feet.
The site development will utilize many low-impact development strategies. We will use pervious pavement for most of the parking surface and the run off from the house roofs will tight lined to and be collected in a bio-swale or rain garden at the lower part of the site.
We intend to build the homes as "green" as possible using the final LEED for Homes certification check list and a guide and we are hopeful that Matthei Place will be a pilot project of the US Green Building Council. The re-use of salvaged materials, energy star lighting packages, and high efficiency combination water and space heating systems are some highlights of green elements.
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