Mayor, community partners celebrate completion of ‘missing middle’ affordable homeownership project
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, Ald. Sean O’Brien, local developer Kaba Bah, and representatives from the Madison Area Community Land Trust (MACLT) joined a local couple in celebrating the completion of two new twin homes in the Owl Creek neighborhood that were made possible through a partnership designed to make homeownership more attainable and affordable.
Ariel Christian and Chet Wells are married and have been living in Madison for eight years but thought owning a home was out of reach due to their incomes – a feeling shared by many Madisonians in a highly competitive housing market.
We absolutely love the area, although we never thought we'd be able to actually buy a home, because we have the privilege of working jobs that we love -- we are rich in other ways. Because of those jobs, we were okay not buying a house and building equity, we were okay renting, but after learning about MACLT and the generous down payment assistance through the City, we could actually buy a house and build equity, it's incredible.
Ariel Christian, new homeowner
The most recent estimates on Madison’s owner-occupied housing market show a vacancy rate of just 0.6%. The combination of very low supply and high demand as more people move to Madison means many people are being effectively locked out of the homeownership market as home sale prices climb.
Partnerships like the one the City of Madison has with MACLT are designed to break down some of those barriers to homeownership. For this project, the City contributed $600,000 from the Affordable Housing Fund, which was awarded through a competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) process. The City also contributed the land for the project, selling the lot in the Owl Creek neighborhood to MACLT for the sum of $1 – another way to keep the cost of the home low.
For that investment, a total of four new homes were created with the pair of zero-lot line twin homes in a space that otherwise would have contained only one homeownership opportunity.
These twin homes are a great example of the housing types that we’ve been working to make possible in every part of Madison and what can be done when we work together with community partners to address housing affordability. I want to thank the Madison Area Community Land Trust and Kaba Bah for continuing to find ways to create homeownership opportunities for more people and making sure these homes stay affordable for generations to come.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway
This is an exciting project because it demonstrates what is possible through innovative partnerships that work to address our city's housing shortage head on, partnerships and zoning reforms that work to lower barriers into homeownership, and partnerships that work to create truly affordable housing that is permanently affordable.
District 16 Ald. Sean O'Brien
We are excited to partner with community-minded developers like Kaba Bah to provide this homeownership opportunity for four new Madison families. Thanks to the City of Madison for making this possible, and we look forward to creating more permanent affordable housing under the land trust program.
Madison Area Community Land Trust Executive Director Mason Cavell
The homes created in this project, priced at about $240,000, are approximately 1,200 square feet each, with two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a concrete patio, and a one-car attached garage. In order to be eligible, buyers had to make no more than 80% of the Area Median Income. For a household of two people, that would translate to an annual household income of up to $83,120.
Christian and Wells got the keys to their new home just after Christmas -- what they call the "best Christmas gift ever." After settling into their new home, they're starting to think about what else might be possible.
"With all of this, maybe the possibility of building our little family, too. I never thought that was possible, either," Christian said.
