Published January 2003

Affordable housing a critical community issue

Fifteen years ago something very interesting happened to me that changed forever my view of affordable housing. I was a young property manager with contracts in hand to manage a dozen different apartment complexes in Snohomish County.

A 20-something tenant who looked like she was nearly 50 had been having trouble paying rent on time in one of my apartment buildings. There were people coming and going from her unit all the time — way more than seemed normal to me. The apartment was on a dead-end street with the roar of I-5 as the backdrop. Hardly the high-rent district.

In September of that year, after months of paying late, she didn’t pay rent at all. I started an eviction process that led to an unlawful detainer action. Ultimately, the court ordered that the sheriff oversee a physical eviction. “Usually, by the time the sheriff comes, they’ll move out, though,” advised the attorney handling the case for me.

Not this time. Although it was the first time I ever had to be involved in an eviction, I swore it would be my last. All her friends were gone now. The sheriff authorized me to turn the key and enter the apartment to begin moving her belongings out to the curb.

I was shocked to see she was sitting on her couch in a daze. She was obviously on drugs. The apartment smelled awful. Drug paraphernalia littered the sparsely decorated unit. Under the law, the landlord has the right to stack the tenant’s belongings along the curb or sidewalk. The first eviction of my career was under way.

It was awful to see her hands shake while she lit cigarette after cigarette and stood almost zombie-like at the doorway while we moved what little she owned out to the street.

Later that night, I drove by the complex. I suppose I was curious just to see what might have happened to her things. What I saw overwhelmed me with a sense of guilt at the sight of the woman actually lying on top of her pile to protect it. She’d lost it, it seemed. It was November now. About 40 degrees and raining. And she was lying on her pile of belongings in a T-shirt.

I called every name in her tenant file to see if there was anyone who could rescue her from this awful situation. She stayed there for three days before someone came by to help her haul it all away.

When folks talk about affordable housing, the image that often comes to mind is a single-family house selling for under $140,000. For me, it’s about the woman I had to evict 15 years ago.

Snohomish County has many organizations doing all they can to create affordable housing for those at the lower end of the affordability scale. Their cause is a noble one — critically important to the community, in fact.

Lois Blake is the executive director of Habitat for Humanity, one of the organizations working to provide affordable housing. “The Jimmy Carter one,” says Blake in helping connect the organization with perhaps one of its most famous supporters.

Habitat has built 100,000 homes and is in 86 countries and all the states of the United States, according to Blake. The organization, as she describes it, “offers families a way to break the cycle of poverty.”

Founded 25 years ago by Millard Fuller in Georgia, Habitat’s mission is to build housing for qualifying partnering families whose income is between 25 percent and 50 percent of HUD median income. Partnering families put in 500 hours of sweat equity in lieu of a down payment. They purchase the home, which is sold at cost on a long-term, no-interest loan.

Blake describes it as more of “a hand up, not a hand out” affordable housing program.

“Costs are kept to a minimum because we use all volunteer labor and operate via volunteer committees. Use of donated new materials also helps with costs. All funds are raised locally,” according to Blake.

Habitat’s most recent project, a five-unit condominium at 3808 Hoyt Ave. in Everett, began site work in November. In early 2002, the organization and their sweat-equity clients completed four units at 26th and West Marine View Drive, also in Everett.

Strong communities know how to deliver affordable housing at every level of the income scale. Organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and others like them deliver stability to the community in ways many of us will never, fortunately, have to know directly.

Snohomish County is fortunate to have a strong pair of housing authorities in Everett and Snohomish County and other nonprofits such as Housing Hope, Habitat for Humanity, Mercy Housing and others working to, as Blake puts it, break the cycle of poverty. But they need our constant attention and a reminder, occasionally, of how critically important having a place to call home can be for any community to consider itself a quality one.

Tom Hoban is CEO of Everett-based Coast Real Estate Services, a property management and real estate advisory company specializing in multi-family and commercial investment properties. He can be contacted by phone at 425-339-3638 or send e-mail to tomhoban@coastmgt.com.

Back to the top/January 2003 Main Menu