Labor of love: Susan Ohlson, pictured with her dog Caspian, helped transform a couple of acres of bare ground in Santa Rosa into a neighborhood for low-income families, with supervision by the Burbank Housing Development Corp.

Time but No Money

Sweating for the American Dream –sweat equity builds a local following

By Yosha Bourgea

WHEN SUSAN OHLSON started building her house, she had no experience in carpentry and knew nothing about construction. But she didn’t let that stop her. “I had no clue how to do this,” Ohlson says. “But my attitude was, OK, well, I’m going to learn.”

In May of 1998, the Santa Rosa neighborhood of De Turk Commons was nothing but a couple of acres of bare soil and 32 low-income families, most of whom, like Ohlson, were new to the construction business. But they shared the dream of owning their own homes, and the willingness to help one another build them from the ground up. Under the supervision of the Burbank Housing Development Corp. in Santa Rosa, they began to make their dream a reality.

“The first couple of weeks, we didn’t have any idea what we were doing. There was a lot of shoveling of dirt,” Ohlson recalls. Soon, the family crews began laying the foundations, tying rebar, and driving stakes. Everyone learned to move quickly when the cement trucks arrived. Even on days when rain threatened to dampen enthusiasm, the work continued.

Ohlson discovered that she had a knack for framing the structure of the houses. As she placed two-by-fours and installed floor joists for the second story, the process of building her home became a labor of love.

“I was able early on in the project to submit changes,” Ohlson says. “I changed a hallway closet into a kitchen pantry. Instead of a sliding glass door off the kitchen, I put in French doors.”

It would have been nearly impossible for Ohlson, a secretary and single mother, to work the required minimum of 30 hours a week on her own. Fortunately, she had assistance from her 19-year-old son, Holland, and from what she calls her “church family,” fellow members of City Life Fellowship who volunteered their time on weekends.

At the end of last May, crews completed construction on the houses of De Turk Commons, and the residents finally moved in. A grateful Ohlson hosted a dinner of thanks for the 20 or so volunteers who had perspired on her behalf. After a year of hard work, she had what so many people struggle for: a house of her own.

“SWEAT EQUITY” is the somewhat undignified term for an arrangement whereby prospective homeowners can work off part of the cost of a house by helping to build it. John Lowry, executive director of Burbank Housing, prefers the term “mutual self-help housing,” although he acknowledges that it’s less catchy.

“We emphasize the mutual aspect of the program,” Lowry says. “It seems important to me that people have some investment in the house that makes them feel attached to it. If people are just handed a house, they may not behave like homeowners. This program provides an experience for them, an emotional equity. It also tends to weed out the people who are not willing to do the work.”

Since 1986, Burbank Housing has supervised the completion of 11 self-help projects throughout Sonoma County, with a total of 287 housing units. Three more projects in Santa Rosa, Windsor, and Cloverdale are slated to begin within the next two years. Quarry Ridge, a Healdsburg project, has halted construction until further notice because of a delay in funding.

Lower-income, first-time home buyers who qualify for the self-help program are required to put in at least 30 hours of construction labor per week per family, although many families choose to do more. A down payment is not required. Included in the package is a deferred payment second loan that does not need to be paid off unless the home is sold again. Most participating families have insufficient income to qualify for even a 5 percent loan in the conventional housing market.

De Turk home buyers wound up with reduced first mortgages averaging $115,000, which, at a 5 percent rate offered through the California Housing Financing Agency, translates to monthly mortgage payments of about $600. In contrast, the same houses in the conventional market would have had a first mortgage of about $140,000, a higher rate–about 7 percent–and a monthly mortgage payment of some $900.

In a red-hot housing market that is quickly moving out of the reach of low- and moderate-income families, these subsidies often can make all the difference for families with limited financial resources–if they are willing to commit to as much as a year of manual labor. Under the technical supervision of Burbank Housing employees, families work together pouring foundations, putting in siding, roofing, installing windowsills and baseboards, hanging doors and cabinets. Roxanne Trujillo, Ohlson’s friend and next-door neighbor at De Turk Commons, says she learned to use a powersaw while building her house.

“They don’t need to have construction skills, although, of course, we’re delighted when we find anyone who does,” Lowry says.

What participating families do need to have is a good credit rating and low debt obligations. In many cases, particularly in rural developments, that means Mexican-American immigrants–farmworkers who are much less likely to have bad credit than whites in the same income range. Mexican-Americans also are more likely to have two-parent families, making it easier for them to meet the labor requirements.

“Most [white families] we work with don’t seem to have trouble living near minorities,” Lowry says, “but quite a few of them are uncomfortable with becoming a minority–that is, being the only white family on their block.”

THE RELATIVELY RECENT history of self-help housing in America actually begins with minorities. In 1964, a group of Quakers in the San Joaquin Valley sat down with local Mexican-American farmworkers and asked them what it was that they wanted most. The workers’ most frequent response came as a surprise: not higher wages, not improved working conditions, but a place they could call their own. In response, the Quakers began searching for ways to make home ownership affordable to low-income families. The following year, they incorporated Self Help Enterprises, the first self-help housing organization in the country.

Today there are 10 groups in the state of California that offer sweat equity programs. Burbank Housing is the only such group in Sonoma County.

One reason that self-help housing is not more widespread is that it isn’t a moneymaking concept. Burbank Housing, a non-profit corporation, covers most of its costs through other projects, including conventional rental housing. The costs of development for self-help housing programs are so high in relation to values that the market remains far from lucrative.

“It’s the same dilemma that private builders face [when they’re] trying to do low-end first-time home buying,” Lowry says. “If you were very efficient, you could do nothing but sweat equity and cover your costs. But it would be tough.”

A more subtle obstacle is the cultural standard by which Americans judge their houses, particularly houses they own. Renting a house in a crowded urban neighborhood is one thing, but who wants to spend 30 years making mortgage payments on one?

“We have a much greater expectation of what homes should be than other cultures,” Lowry says. “[In America] the expectation is that you need to have a garage and you need to have individual road access.”

Burbank Housing has what is probably the highest-density self-help program in the country. Although many prospective home buyers feel the need for privacy and plenty of space, that ideal is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. In the rapidly escalating local housing market, finding an affordable house–any house–is a challenge.

“A single family lot is a luxury in Sonoma County,” Lowry says.

TODAY, THE HOUSES of De Turk Commons are still noticeably newer than the ones across the street. The new paint gleams in the winter sunlight; in each front yard, a young tree is tied to a wooden stake. “The neighborhood is much quieter than I thought it would be,” says Ohlson, scooping up her shih tzu, Caspian, from the front lawn. “There are lots of small kids, but they’re very well behaved. The neighbors are just wonderful.”

Inside, the house is surprisingly spacious. At the top of the carpeted staircase are three bedrooms, including a guest room that Ohlson will convert into a sewing room next year. Warm sun streams through the south-facing windows.

Although the tree out front has just begun to sink its roots, Ohlson plans to watch it grow for a long time. The house is her son’s inheritance, something she hopes will remain in the family for generations. In a way, it’s also a gift to herself.

“I don’t know if I could just walk in and buy a house after having had this experience,” Ohlson says. “I know how this house was put together. I’ve always been a renter, and whenever I had a problem I had to call the landlord.

“I’ve got the education now, where I know how to do the stuff myself.”

To be placed on the Burbank Housing mailing list for upcoming sweat equity projects, call Mariella Zapata at 573-5902.

From the January 20-26, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Michael Amsler

Growing Pains

High-density housing goes hand in hand with urban growth boundaries. So why isn’t anyone willing to talk about it?

By Janet Wells

HIGH-DENSITY affordable housing sure has a lousy reputation: monolithic facades, postage-stamp yards, slovenly upkeep, breeding ground for crime. No one wants that kind of a project in the neighborhood, right? Since the bulk of home construction in the county continues to be the politically palatable suburban ranch house, most Sonoma County residents haven’t had to grapple with the issue.

But with the onslaught of urban growth boundaries in Sonoma County, coupled with the region’s ongoing population boom, the key to the future may be high-density housing.

“Higher density. Not high density,” Sonoma County Conservation Action’s Mark Green corrects, with an edge of frustration. “We’re not talking 12-story apartment blocks. We’re talking eight units to the acre.

“There’s a disconnect between the mental picture of what people see high density meaning and what it really means,” Green adds. “You have to deal with neighborhood organizations who think that affordable housing means crack housing, which is absurd. Neighbors get all in a twist at the idea of low-income housing. Affordable-housing [residents] in Sonoma County–you’re talking about dentists.”

Sonoma County, with its rolling hills and open pastureland, seems to invite endless development. Cookie-cutter subdivisions with bucolic-sounding names abound. But the supply of land isn’t endless, and voters have made it clear that they want to curb growth and contain sprawl. In 1996, Sonoma County became the first in the nation to establish comprehensive growth boundaries by voter approval. Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, and Healdsburg adopted boundaries, followed two years later by Cotati, Petaluma, and Windsor.

Rohnert Park is revisiting its four-year boundary, and Sonoma is considering jumping on the bandwagon. And Sonoma County is hardly alone. Urban growth boundaries have been approved in a dozen cities around the Bay Area.

A growing number of environmentalists and urban planners say that the easy part is adopting growth limits. The tough part is getting people to live within them–which means letting go of a keystone of the American Dream: the spacious home with white picket fence, mammoth yard, detached garage. It’s too soon to determine the impact of Sonoma County’s newly inducted growth boundaries. But one thing is clear: development will eventually bump up against the boundaries. The question is how to accommodate the county’s projected 116,000 jump in population over the next 20 years–without pushing the boundaries out.

The answer lies in clustering smaller, more densely compacted homes near mass transit and jobs, and leaving open space–well, open, rather than covered with sprawling ranchettes.

In Silicon Valley, where a building boom has cut the residential land inventory in half in less than five years, a report by Strategic Economics in Berkeley calculated that communities there could provide for up to 99 percent of the growing workforce by embracing higher-density housing. Sonoma County affordable-housing advocates say the same is true for the North Bay area.

“We can’t go out. We have to go up,” says Petaluma housing director Bonne Gaebler. When the Petaluma City Council recently approved an 88-unit development on four acres, its only question was why the project didn’t go up three or four stories.

“And it’s in a residential neighborhood,” Gaebler says. “Our council is trying to walk the talk.”

But in Sonoma County, Petaluma seems to be somewhat of an exception. So far, local planning efforts have done little to slow the pace of single-family home construction.

In the Bay Area, there were 11,748 permits issued for single-family homes in 1995, and 16,823 in 1998, a 43 percent increase, according to the Real Estate Research Council of Northern California.

In Santa Rosa, the percentage of single-family homes compared to multifamily units has ballooned precipitously since the mid-1980s, when half of the homes built were multifamily. In 1997, just 2 percent of the homes built were multifamily. And the single-family homes aren’t exactly winning praise from environmentalists or affordable-housing advocates. “People are calling them McMansions,” says Chris Brown of Greenbelt Alliance. “It’s a retiree with a 3,000-square-foot home with four bathrooms. One for the wife, one for the husband, one for the dog. It’s people with too much house.

“People should be able to buy whatever they want. At the same time there are lots of people who can’t buy anything because there is so much land being taken up by huge expensive houses,” Brown adds.

“We are going to have to make a choice,” Green says, “between paving everything we love about this place and living at higher densities. Thus far, most of the city councils have just failed to stand up to developers who just want to do the same old turn-the-crank subdivision out of lack of vision or unwillingness to take a chance.”

Tim Coyle, senior vice president with the California Building Industry Association, puts the onus on “political opposition” as the barrier to higher-density development.

“To say theoretically that home ownership will take the form of stacked housing is to mistake what the public is demanding. Most Americans prefer a detached single-family home,” Coyle says. “If the market suddenly changes so that they suddenly want higher-density multifamily housing, then we’ll build it.”

Poppycock, Green says. People need to be educated about housing options. And if developers came up with innovative, well-designed projects, the demand would be high.

“Three stories, with shops below, a real mix of residential, commercial, and offices, so that you have a village-style community again,” Green muses. “Where those things get built, they are incredibly desirable. The transit-oriented housing in Portland, Oregon, is the most valuable rental property on a square-foot basis in the area. It’s a great place to be.”

On the front lines: Attorney David Grabill is representing plaintiffs in a housing suit against the county. Construction of multifamily housing has less to do with politics and market demand and more to do with financing and vacancy rates, says Santa Rosa’s Community Development Director Wayne Goldberg. The climate for multifamily housing clearly is getting rosier: In 1998, the city issued permits for 600 units of multifamily housing, compared to a paltry 12 units the year before.

“The city doesn’t build housing, developers build housing, and they have to get loans and financing. There are a lot of people involved in those decisions,” Goldberg says. “When the vacancy rates are higher, people are not going to build apartments in that market. When they get as low as they have recently, a number of units are coming on line.”

Housing density is one of the crucial issues in a lawsuit against Sonoma County. The lawsuit charges the county with failing to comply with state housing laws that require jurisdictions to facilitate the development of affordable housing.

“There has been a very, very strong resistance in county government to high-density housing where the need is very great,” says Santa Rosa attorney David Grabill, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group, as well as three plaintiffs who have been unable to find affordable housing. “It’s just a battle every step of the way.”

In an attempt to settle the lawsuit, the county recently hired a consultant to search for housing sites for low- and very-low-income residents. “We’re hoping that the survey will identify some land the county could rezone for high-density affordable housing,” Grabill says. “We’re not optimistic that they’re going to do it voluntarily. We expect that it’s going to end up having to be decided by a judge.”

If Grabill wins, he says, it could mean that the county would be barred from issuing any construction permits as long as the housing element remains out of compliance. “But the county can appeal, we can appeal,” Grabill says. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to get any houses built.”

Sonoma County Supervisor Mike Reilly counters that unincorporated county lands are the wrong place for high-density housing. “The thrust of our general plan since 1979 has been to try to protect the agricultural and rural areas from a lot of development and try to direct most of the development into the incorporated areas along the 101 corridor,” he says. “People in the cities have told us, through the urban growth boundaries, that that’s what they want.”

Urbanized, high-density development belongs in the cities, Reilly adds. “The county gets responsible for everything else. We’ve got the big regional parks, farmland. You don’t want the same level of urbanization in those areas. It’s not good planning.”

STILL, REILLY CONCEDES, the issue of affordable housing is at a critical juncture. “I think there needs to be a real dialogue between the environmental community and the people concerned about affordable housing. We need to see if there is common ground there. The market clearly has taken everything out of reach.

“My brother moved out from Maryland and wanted to live in Sonoma County,” Reilly says. “He was catatonic with sticker shock at the housing prices. He’s now living in Vacaville.”

Many folks are in a similar position. And it looks as though the exodus of people settling for housing in outlying areas may continue, since few planners predict a high-density housing boom just over the horizon.

“Everyone likes these good ideas until they come next door,” says Greg Carr, Sonoma County’s manager for comprehensive planning. “That’s what’s difficult. In an area like Bennett Valley where the housing is well maintained, in a homogenous neighborhood, you’re unlikely to have anyone interested in higher density. . . . You have to wrestle with how it fits in the neighborhood.

“Cities aren’t going to rush in and start adopting 30- to 40-units-an-acre housing projects just because of urban growth boundaries,” Carr adds. “I wouldn’t expect to see those types of changes until they started doing updates and started running out of land.” *

Schmutz and Schmaltz

Making high density palatable

OAKLAND ARCHITECT Mike Pyatok’s professional goal is to make affordable housing welcome in a community. How does he do it? By paying attention to schmutz and schmaltz.

“Rental housing is often disliked by the homeowner communities because the amount of design that goes into it is often minimal,” Pyatok says. “We need to be sensitive to the cultural preferences of homeowners.”

Pyatok uses updated interpretations of Craftsman, Mission, Victorian styles–the schmaltz–to give affordable housing the look and feel of something well crafted and more expensive. Schmaltz, he says, helps the permit-approval process along, as well as fostering neighborhood acceptance.

“Part of it is to be a good neighbor and to fit in so the people can live there without being stigmatized,” says Pyatok, whose firm designs about 80 percent of its projects for non-profit affordable-housing corporations.

The Pyatok-designed Tower Apartments in Rohnert Park have won several awards, and the development is a far cry from the typical stacked flats housing six families around a common stairwell. The project has 25 units an acre with two- to three-story buildings sharing large courtyards. In addition, all the units have back patios or terraces–which is where the schmutz comes in.

“Schmutz is the messy, dirty side of life,” he says. “Everybody’s house has a front, sides, and back. The back is where you can let your hair down and relax. Multifamily housing should have the same opportunity.”

From the January 13-19, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.