All three of these anchors, affordability, accessibility and safety, are vitally important in affordable housing.
Is it AFFORDABLE?
The answer to this question involves understanding a new real estate model called the Community Land Trust (CLT) on which the Floral Hill Terrace development is based.
Click here to read more about Community Land Trusts.
It does allow first time home buyers a path to ownership and includes supportive education and counseling about debt reduction and other resources through DevNW.
- However you do not actually own the land your house is built on. The land ownership is held by a Community Land Trust (CLT) which saves you money in upfront costs but limits the appreciation your investment can make over time since upon resale the price would still have to qualify as 80% or less of the Area Median Income. Any appreciation from a sale is then divided with the CLT so you only retain 25% percent of any windfall as your housing increases in value. (Read more about the how your resale of your home would work here.)
- Additionally there is a monthly ground use fee that is on top of your mortgage payment similar to a homeowner association fee.
- But all the maintenance and repairs on your unit, exterior and interior, are your financial responsibility. None of the exterior care like painting, roof repair and landscape maintenance is taken care of by the Land Trust. No landlord or home owners association pays for or manages those expenses even though you are paying a ground use fee every month.
“Yes, but I couldn’t find anything on the market that would be less expensive!”
- Actually the Laurel Hill Valley is a widely diverse economic neighborhood with older affordable homes that are on the market in the $250,000 range but they typically need repairs and updating. What makes them worth it is that you would own the whole property and you would NOT need to limit your sales price upon resale to 80% of the Area Median Income. Your home’s value would be linked to the rise in the area’s property values, not a percentage of the area’s median income and the appreciation would be all yours. This is where security for your family’s future is built.
Is it ACCESSIBLE?
Is Public Transit available?
- There is NO LTD service here in the valley. The closest access to LTD is on Franklin Boulevard almost a mile and a half down the hill. How do people get to the services that are all based outside of the valley? Even the developer, DevNW, acknowledges on page 15 of their Application, “Most residents will likely rely on personal vehicles.” Not bikes, not busses, not walking but personal vehicles.
Can I walk to the grocery store or pharmacy?
- The closest traditional groceries and pharmacy are the Safeway on W. 18th Street which is over 2.8 miles away by foot and would take over 1 hour to walk to.
What about biking?
- Floral Hill Terrace is located on one of the oldest roads in the Laurel Hill Valley. It is an unimproved, beautiful, winding, hilly and narrow country lane with no marked bike lanes, no roadway shoulders, no street lighting, and no sidewalks.
Once you are out of the Floral Hill Terrace development the roads can be challenging with a two-way pavement width of just 17 feet wide. Plenty of residents and visitors to Laurel Hill Valley use bikes as their primary mode of transportation but it takes special “slow as you go” care on the part of drivers, bicyclists and walkers to keep everyone safe. (Photo credit Sebastiane Power, LHV resident.)
THIS IS THE STREET THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT LOCATING THE DEVELOPMENT ON!
Four residents taking a jog down Floral Hill Drive, a rustic and 17 foot wide country lane with no shoulder on the roadway. Just four people to up more than half the roadway.
Is it SAFE?
Concerns about wildfires are never far from our minds here in the valley and we are facing our hottest and driest summer ever in 2026. Smoke ANYWHERE in the valley gets ALL of our attention!
Risks:
- Kindling-dry brush,
- Dying trees are like roman candles as ignition sources,
- Unhoused campers in the park forest using fires for cooking and warmth,
- Narrow and winding unimproved streets with difficult emergency vehicle access,
- 100 year old water infrastructure which is prone to burst a main water line when taxed to the max in a crisis.
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https://isfloralhilltherightplace.com/contact/
