The alpenglow vista of the Cascades from Dana Madison’s front porch in Bend is unmatched.
Even after more than 40 years in the most populated city in central Oregon, the pink color of the mountain range never gets old.
After her family’s business, a satellite television outlet, closed last year, Madison, who works at a nearby Presbyterian church, said, “It takes away my breath every morning.”
As property prices approach the mountaintops, city views are becoming a luxury for low-income individuals like Madison. According to Beacon Appraisal Group LLC, the median Bend property sold for $700,000 most recently. Officials claim the rising cost of living has caused many people to leave the area.
In May 2021, Madison paid $274,000 for her two-bedroom, two-bathroom house. She benefits from low pandemic mortgage rates and the fact that she only owns the house and not the property she lives on, paying slightly more than $900 a month in principal and interest.
A nonprofit organization in Bend called RootedHomes manages the so-called community land trust that owns the land. In Bend, where a lack of available homes and a growing population are driving up the cost of homes and, most importantly, the cost of the land on which they are built, the arrangement significantly lowers Madison’s monthly mortgage payment.
As part of a patchwork of partial solutions to a worsening housing affordability crisis, community land trusts are growing in popularity in Oregon.
Madison claimed that with property prices soaring, the land trust concept was the only option for people like me.
She claimed that it simply made it more accessible by making it more affordable.
According to cofounder Amy Warren, RootedHomes began as Kor Community Land Trust just over ten years ago with the goal of constructing affordable, energy-efficient housing for local workers. She recalled working for free for three years before the nonprofit managed to raise enough funds to hire her as executive director and purchase some land for development.
According to Jackie Keogh, who succeeded Warren as executive director in 2021, Rooted aims to have around 60 homes in Bend by the end of this year and is growing into nearby villages.
Establishing a land trust is difficult since someone must manage its intricate ownership structure forever, and trusts that already exist sometimes find it difficult to grow due to a lack of finance.
Proponents like Grounded Solutions Network CEO Tony Pickett contend that part of the appeal is permanence. Income-restriction requirements for many types of affordable housing developments end after a few decades. More generations of families can benefit from community land trusts, which are intended to last forever and include deed limitations that enforce their affordability.
According to Pickett, the trusts are flourishing, active, and expanding; a recent study revealed that there are over 300 of these programs in the United States.
According to Pickett, the communal land trust model began in the South in the 1960s when Black sharecroppers rented land for their farms and residences. They were vulnerable to the whims of white landlords, who, according to Pickett, frequently drove out tenant farmers for nonviolent protests.
According to Pickett, a group of civil rights pioneers gathered funds to travel to Israel and research communal land ownership. They returned with the idea to establish what are now known as community land trusts. According to him, the first, which was founded in Georgia, was one of the biggest African American-owned property holdings in the United States at the time.
According to Pickett, land trusts gained popularity in the decades that followed as religious and charitable organizations searched for innovative ways to lower housing costs for low-income households. Bernie Sanders, the mayor of Burlington at the time, supported the Vermont trust, which is currently the biggest.
Community land trust homes often house families for five to seven years before they leave. Citing a research from his company and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Pickett stated that six out of ten inhabitants will move into market-rate residences, demonstrating how a step up can promote economic mobility.
Denise Rowcroft is uncertain about her future in her land trust home, which is located in the Rooted at Crescita development close to Pilot Butte, the massive hill that dominates the eastern skyline of Bend. She is delaying that decision until at least her daughter, who is currently twelve years old and in middle school, completes high school.
Bendite In mid-January, housing officials, including Governor Tina Kotek, visited Denise Rowcroft’s house at Rooted at Crescita to discuss the community land trust model.OregonLive’s Jonathan Bach I, The Oregonian
In order to reduce time and interest on the mortgage, she and her spouse round up to the next hundred dollars each month to pay $2,200 for the two-story home they purchased in 2023.
The Rowcrofts would not have been able to acquire a home in Bend without the land trust, according to Denise Rowcroft.
She claimed that we felt as though we had won the jackpot.
They are regarded as middle-class. Since Rowcroft is employed by an environmental nonprofit, they receive more money than the four low-income households who share the lot, who typically spend $1,300 per month.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek and other guests in town for a housing conference were given access to the Rowcrofts’ home on January 15.
In preparation for the state leader’s coming, the family had cleaned the refrigerator and mopped the floors. To show consideration for the floors, guests either removed their shoes or put on blue plastic booties. As reporters and policy wonks gathered at the entrance, Kotek hurried through the less than 1,000-square-foot home and explored the upstairs.
The tour party was led by Keogh, the RootedHomes leader, on a roundabout tour of Crescita, where the homes’ cheap prices are maintained by a 99-year land lease or deed limitation. The homeowner has a 99-year lease on the trust-owned land, which permits them to utilize it for their home without actually owning it. Keogh claims that since the lease automatically renews, the result is long-term affordability.
RootedHomes executive director Jackie Keogh talks to a group visiting one of the organization’s Bend community land trust properties. In 2021, she joined Rooted.OregonLive’s Jonathan Bach I, The Oregonian
A homeowner’s ability to build equity is frequently restricted by land trusts. The owner’s equity is equivalent to 1.5% of their mortgage plus any down payment aid grants, compounded at a rate of 1.5% annually. This is the fixed-rate resale formula used by Rooted.
According to that calculation, if an average homeowner purchased $250,000 for their home and received $50,000 in down payment help, they should anticipate having roughly $80,000 in equity after ten years, Keogh told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Funds for the poor The Local Innovation and Fast Track state initiative is the source of RootedHomes developments. The program has been in place for almost ten years and provides low-income people with funding for both rental and homeownership. In the next budget cycle, Kotek has suggested allocating $100 million for for-sale homes and $700 million for rental housing construction. The latter would contain money that community land trusts might use to buy land and finance building projects.
The state housing finance organization, Oregon Housing and Community Services, previously told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the investment would generate around 500 owner-occupied homes and 7,000 rental properties for low-income Oregonians.
Delivering brief remarks outside the Rowcroft home, Kotek touted Crescita as an example of innovation in the LIFT subsidy program, highlighting the long-term affordability the land trust model encourages, which is really important from the state s perspective.
In 2021, Keogh relocated from Portland with her young family to work for the NGO. She had contributed to the development of programs at the Portland Housing Bureau that aimed to relocate people with historical ties to North and Northeast Portland to those areas. Later, she worked with a communal land trust in the Portland region called Proud Ground.
Since taxpayers and private contributors, who typically assist in funding middle-class apartments, only make one investment in community land trusts, she believes they are a worthy use of public funds that will provide long-term affordability for numerous homes.
Beyond Bend, RootedHomes intends to grow into neighboring areas like Redmond and Prineville. Due in part to the fact that former Bend residents have moved away in quest of more inexpensive housing, those communities are also expanding quickly.
Recent increases in Bend’s home prices have led to the implementation of new housing-affordability policies.OregonLive’s Jonathan Bach I, The Oregonian
But another reason the nonprofit is looking to other cities in central Oregon is that they ve agreed to donate land and pay for streets, sewer pipes and other costly infrastructure typically paid for by developers.
We just can t really say no, said Keogh, who suspects the local governments are eager to partner because housing affordability strengthens the city s economic backbone by keeping teachers, nurses and other essential workers local.
Keogh said she believes more officials will soon see value in supporting community land trusts across the state. RootedHomes consults government agencies and nonprofits across the state that are interested in housing affordability and routinely hears particularly in southern Oregon and on the coast that they lack the capital to establish land trusts.
Historically, land trusts were not always funded, Keogh said, noting that states like Vermont have generally had more money available. I think Oregon will get there.
–Jonathan Bachcovers housing and real estate. Reach him by email [email protected] by phone at 503-221-4303.
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