Housing Trust to build 11 affordable homes in Twisp

“We have always been committed to helping with local housing, but can’t do it alone,” Konrad said. “I have been watching what the Methow Housing Trust does with their program, and have two employees that already live in MHT homes in Twisp. They are fulfilling an important community need, and we wanted to help them continue to successfully build more homes for local folks as soon as possible.”

“The Konrads have been such leaders in housing for a good long time. We are proud to have their trust and partnership on this project,” Ready said.

2021 marked a community-wide call to action to address growing disparities in access to housing in the Valley, which are felt (and heard) in new ways, and with new urgency. The sense of belonging afforded by secure housing is increasingly hard to come by, especially for year-round residents whose income is derived locally.

“This partnership has been brewing for over two years, but the events and market trends of this past year made it a clear priority,” said Housing Trust Executive Director Danica Ready in a statement. “MHT has learned, from informal conversations with our partners in affordable rental development, that a key to their grant-seeking success is being able to declare secured land for their project at the time they apply for funding. We have so much respect for the leadership and work of HAOC, so it was an obvious partnership to pursue.”

“The housing crisis we are currently facing … is not new news for us,” Nancy Nash-Mendez, Executive Director of the Housing Authority said. “The thought that through this new partnership, there will be 40- plus families having a place to call home by the end of 2023 is very exciting.”

In our North Cascades valley home, we are starting to work out a kind of pathway forward. The conversation is active. The Town of Winthrop recently signed a resolution declaring a housing crisis in recognition that “inaction will result in irreversible damage to the fabric of the community.” Clearly, housing is at the epicenter of our community’s consciousness, with the median home sale price doubling in the past five years from $270,000 in 2016, to $563,000 in 2021 (YTD), and businesses closing their doors more and more hours and days of the week due to a lack of workforce availability.

There is no time to lose if we wish to ensure that a genuine sense of belonging is still attainable to all of our community members, regardless of a person’s age, income or when they decided to make the Methow their home town.

The Methow Housing Trust is growing our staff as we prepare to scale up our work to develop and preserve more permanently affordable, quality housing for Methow Valley residents. Come join our team!

Hello! I’m Sarah and I am the Director of Outreach here at the Methow Housing Trust. I’m also a MHT homeowner. Last month I talked to many wonderful community members while tabling at grocery stores. I wanted to share some of the frequent conversations had. I imagine many of you have similar questions to those I spoke with. I’ll be posting the Table Talk Q&As over the next few days on our MHT Instagram and Facebook pages. Read on to see them all here.

Get to know the Methow Housing Trust. Who are we? How does owning a home through a community land trust work? What is the difference betweening owning a MHT home and renting in the Methow Valley? Who is eligible for a MHT home? Read on for the answers to these and other common questions.

As the housing crisis in the Methow Valley continues to grow, community investment in the Methow Housing Trust has created 21 permanently affordable homes for ownership by Valley residents. See highlights from the Methow Housing Trust 2020 Annual Report in our most recent blog.

“The eligibility policy is the backbone of our mission,” said Rocklynn Culp, policy committee chair for the Methow Housing Trust, in a statement. “We wrestled with multiple eligibility options for well over a year before landing on the decision that felt right.”

MHT will now offer two options. For a family making up to 100% of the Area Median Income (AMI), the home price and mortgage will be calculated to fit their “wage reality,” according to the housing trust.

Families making 150% of the AMI are newly eligible to apply, and their home sale price will be closer to the market rate, but still subsidized by MHT. The trust will sell up to 25% of its homes to families in the higher wage bracket.