Posted by Susy Thielen on December 7th, 2009 — in Smart Growth
Amy Pyle
Dec 5th 2009
Marianne Cusato was busy designing cottages for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina when requests started pouring in from developers, builders and homeowners across the country begging her to create a similarly compact dwelling for them.
“I was very focused on disaster housing and the small-house movement came to me,” Cusato told WalletPop.
Though Cusato’s 300- to 1,800-square-foot Katrina Cottages — now for sale at Lowe’s — are an extreme example of the smaller-is-better mentality, the movement appears to be more than a fad, especially now that the economy has tanked.
A slew of surveys shows that homeowners are looking to slim down, hoping for less space to heat, cool and clean, and cheaper mortgage payments. A recent CNN poll found 69% of respondents felt homes had gotten too big and Kermit Baker, an American Institute of Architects economist, reported in October that while people want a home office more than ever (reflecting in part the growing number of self-employed and telecommuting workers), special-function rooms such as home theaters, exercise rooms, guest wings and three-car garages have become less popular.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on November 12th, 2009 — in Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Saturday, November 07, 2009
Picture a middle school dance. Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other, everyone too shy to make the first move onto the gym-turned-dance floor.
In a sense, the relationship between young professionals and their elder counterparts can be thought of the same way.
Either side may want to participate in community initiatives, but their involvement won’t happen without a first step. Or: until somebody walks across that room, nobody dances.
Talk of how to take those first steps — and why they are important — happened Friday morning in Keene, at an annual Business Leaders Breakfast sponsored by Heading for Home, the Monadnock Region’s housing coalition.
Though the discussion hinged on the economic necessity of young professionals, much of it also centered on the necessity of their having affordable housing — something a community needs for a vibrant workforce to flourish in the first place, event participants said. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on October 19th, 2009 — in Monadnock Region Coalition
Heading for Home’s 4th annual Business Leaders Breakfast on November 6.
Topic: Will the Monadnock Region be ready for economic recovery?
Panelists:
Neil Giarrantana, President and CTO of Lucidus Internet Solutions, Katie Sutherland, Architect, and Steve Reno, the former Chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire.
The panel discussed the economic necessity of having affordable housing available when trying to recruit and retain younger professional workers. This is one of the critical issues that could make or break the Monadnock region’s future economic growth as we compete with the rest of the state and New England.
Dan Scully, Daniel V. Scully Architects, presented his three dimensional model of central Keene showing how housing density could be increased in the central business district by adding upper levels to existing buildings.
Community Sponsors:
This event was sponsored by the Savings Bank of Walpole and Connecticut River Bank, NA.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on July 13th, 2009 — in Membership, Monadnock Region Coalition
Heading for Home offers an easy way for our community to support workforce housing in the Monadnock Region. Click here or on the “Donate Now” white text link above to submit your donation. You will receive email confirmation via PayPal that your donation has been accepted.
We are utilizing this approach to maximize the impact of our donors’ contributions while minimizing the high overhead costs (postage, printing, etc.) incurred when using a mail-based donor campaign.
Do you have questions about what Heading for Home has accomplished? Click here to see a summary of Heading for Home’s recent accomplishments.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on April 16th, 2009 — in Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Thursday, April 16, 2009
It’s not often that a tax map is so shocking it makes people gasp.
But when those maps show that in six years more than half of Keene’s workforce housing — housing stock that employed people in low- and middle-income brackets can afford — simply disappeared, otherwise mundane tax maps become unbelievable.
Put simply, “It’s a pretty significant decrease,” said Torin Hjelmstad, one of three Keene State College geography students responsible for the map, one part of a workforce housing study titled “May the Force be with you: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region.”
Hjelmstad, along with students Sarah Forler and Elizabeth Kane, presented the report to the public Wednesday night at Bentley Commons in Keene. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on April 6th, 2009 — in Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition
On April 15, 2009, Heading for Home and the Keene State Department of Geography presented the report, “May the Force be with You: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region,” an original study comparing the changes in workforce housing availability in the Monadnock Region in 2001 and 2008.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on April 6th, 2009 — in Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Susan R. Thielen has heard the myths.
When people hear “workforce housing,” they picture derelict trailers, imagine an influx of children and cry out that such a move will cost them more in property tax dollars.
It’s all part of what Thielen, coordinator of Keene’s workforce housing coalition Heading for Home, calls workforce housing’s “image problem.”
“(People) want the younger people, they want the workforce, they want the viable tax base,” she said. “But they just don’t want their neighborhood to change.”
Whether towns like it or not, that change has come, in the form of a new workforce housing law, passed last year and set to take effect this July. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on February 3rd, 2009 — in Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Monday, February 02, 2009
New Hampshire’s workforce housing law, passed this summer, has a grand goal: To fight the state’s affordable-housing shortage, and in turn create a productive, thriving workforce that can afford to live where it works.
Despite this lofty goal, the law — set to take effect in July — has caused communities across New Hampshire to struggle with meeting its web of new requirements.
“The law is difficult for communities to understand and comply with,” said Bruce D. Simpson, chairman of Dublin’s planning board.
To give these communities time to figure out what to do, state Rep. Peter R. Leishman recently helped sponsor a bill to delay the law for a year, until July 2010.
The Peterborough Democrat said he decided to introduce the bill after receiving a call from town officials in Sharon.
“They were totally overwhelmed by the (workforce housing law) due to their size and lack of resources,” he said.
“(They) didn’t feel they could get things together before July of this year.”
The law requires towns to ensure that land-use ordinances and regulations “provide reasonable and realistic opportunities for the development of workforce housing.” Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on October 6th, 2008 — in Housing News
The Village at University Heights (Flagstaff, AZ) will have 10 two-bedroom condos priced as low as $149,000 for residents earning no more than $73,750 a year.
By J. FERGUSON
Arizona Sun Staff Reporter
Monday, October 06, 2008
Another local Flagstaff developer has answered the call from the community for more affordable housing options.
John Crowley has recently lowered the price of nearly 5 percent of his condo conversion units at The Village at University Heights by $30,000 apiece to help locals buy their first home. Crowley has created 10 permanently affordable units in the former apartment complex for Flagstaff residents earning between 80 and 125 percent of the area median income, which is currently about $58,000 for a family of four.
That means households earning between roughly $46,400 and $73,750 would qualify for Crowley’s condos.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 24th, 2008 — in Housing News
Census: Housing costs eat up half of more than 7 million Americans’ incomes
By ADRIAN SAINZ
The Associated Press
MIAMI
Al Ray is so strapped for cash, the only time he eats out is on Wednesday or Sunday, when the local McDonald’s sells hamburgers for 49 cents.
Ray lost his engineering job last November, and has been working as high school tutor, scratching out about $1,000 a month — if he’s lucky. He struggled to make his $1,400 monthly mortgage payment and $330 monthly homeowners’ association fee until May, when he stopped paying.
Ray, 44, is looking for work and renting out a room in his two-bedroom condo in Davie, Fla., for $500, but his monthly income doesn’t match his expenses and he’s facing foreclosure.
“I barely have money to survive,” he said. Read the rest of this page »
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