Shoreview Area Housing Initiative giving back with affordable housing
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The Met Council came to Shoreview back in 2001 and wanted to buy 10 homes in the city and put people at 50% or less of poverty level in those homes.
“I said absolutely not, no way, no shape, no how, that doesn’t belong in Shoreview,” said Blake Huffman. “I in subsequent years had a couple things that made me think wow, I wonder if that’s the right decision, and you know, you look at the police reports and those homes have no excessive activity versus any other house in Shoreview. And so I called the Met Council and said Hey Met Council, you’re right, I’m wrong, how can I help? And they said well we’re not buying any more homes. And I said ok, I’ll go do it myself.”
In 2008 Huffman and a handfull of local business men and women got together to see how they could intelligently and meaningfully give back to the community. They did research and came to the conclusion that if you want to help out poverty, housing is the number one issue. Out of this quest to give back the Shoreview Area Housing Initiative was formed. The plan was to buy one house at a time in a nice neighborhood with good schools and rent it out to single parents of school age kids for 30% of their income. They raised money, purchased a town home, and gave it a makeover including all new appliances, carpet and paint. After the home was ready they rented it out to a low income, single parent family that moved in October 1 of 2009.
Shoreview City Councilmember Blake Huffman is President of the Shoreview Area Housing Initiative (SAHI). He and 11 others make up the board of directors for the organization. Funding for the organization is private and contributions have come from a handful of individuals.
SAHI sought out people with expertise to learn how to provide this type of service. Denise Beigbeder and Mary Lou Egan, both Community Representatives for Ramsey County Community and Economic Development gave key advice such as buying town homes instead of single family homes because the exterior upkeep is usually taken care of by an association. This eases the maintenance cost and time for items such as lawn upkeep or roof and siding repairs. They also suggested SAHI to narrow their focus when finding a family to live in the home. There are so many people in need but the process is much easier if you form partnerships with a number of organizations that service specific groups of people in need. These organizations can help identify people that are ready for a housing solution like this.
“We are very excited about it,” said Denise Beigbeder. “It’s unusual that a group of people would come together and take the steps to form an organization and then proceed. Anytime you get a household that can succeed, you know with a little support, that’s a marvelous thing.”
The Shoreview Area Housing Initiative was grateful for the help of Beigbeder, Egan and the Ramsey County CED prompting Huffman to present the County with a plaque recognizing them for their support.
“They were so helpful,” said Huffman. “And all that happened not because of me or the board, but talking to really smart people like Mary Lou and Denise and several others as well. That is why I wanted to go and thank Ramsey County.”
SAHI partners with several organizations to help identify families that are ready to make that next step up in self-sufficiency and housing. Among these organizations is:
- East Metro Women’s Council – White Bear Lake
- The Dwelling Place – domestic abuse shelter
- Union Gospel Mission- Naomi Family Residence
Huffman also explained how affordable housing is good for the community. The housing market has dropped and many foreclosed homes are sitting vacant. An organization like SAHI can buy a distressed house, fix it up, and get a stable tenant in it with a vision for long term. SAHI provides education on home ownership and opportunities to be involved in the community and schools where the tenants live. Tenants do have an option to buy the house they are renting. If they choose to do so a percentage of each month’s rent payment can go to a fund towards buying the house.
SAHI is working with responsible urgency on future homes and they have purchase orders out now. It is a great time to buy because its a buyer’s housing market out there. They don’t plan on doing much different with future homes than they did with the first, but they would like to do more organizing with volunteer help from boy and girl scouts and church groups, really trying to bring the community together and be involved.
Now what the organization needs is fundraising. They purposely went slow. They didn’t want to go out and ask a lot of people until they had a good and successful product. Now that they have that success with house number one and a workable model they feel they can succeed.
So far feedback from people has been positive for the Shoreview Area Housing Initiative, but Huffman suspects there may be a few that are not on board with affordable housing.
“But it’s not government driven affordable housing,” Huffman said. ”I’ll catch some good heat over it, which is more than fine.”
