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HFHNA’s first seed home was fully funded by the M3F Music Festival (which has provided over $250,000 to HFHNA in the past five years alone).
Years ago, the Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona (HFHNA) realized that inflated housing and commodity prices would eventually exacerbate the affordable housing/workforce housing problem in Flagstaff, thereby becoming more – little financially sustainable for HFHNA to build three- or four- bedroom Habitat homes.
In response to these economic changes, an idea to create a forced savings program through homeownership would allow HFHNA to build more, serve more, and be the change in housing that Flagstaff so desperately desires. The phrase “Starter Homes” was first coined by previous Flagstaff Mayor Coral Evans. We’ve taken the idea of the small footprint home and incorporated HFHNA’s 0% interest financing model to create an “equity” savings program, allowing our homeowners to quickly save their own wealth.
Starter home costs are as follows: $1000 down payment and you just bought a home in Flagstaff! Monthly mortgage payments are at or below $1,000 per month. These payments create a capital savings of $10,000 per year. When a homeowner is ready to sell their home, only Habitat can buy it back and provide the homeowner with 100% of their own savings. This equates to $30,000 after three years, $50,000 after five years, or $100,000 after 10 years. Savings can be used at the previous homeowner’s discretion, with the starter home being renovated by HFHNA and resold to another low-income family to start a new savings program. Our goal is for a starter home to provide a savings program for multiple families, not just one.
HFHNA’s first seed home was fully funded by the M3F Music Festival (which has provided over $250,000 to HFHNA in the past five years alone). HFHNA has amazing partners to keep total construction costs to a minimum and they include: Wespac Construction, Realty Executives of Flagstaff and the City of Flagstaff Land Trust Program. With these partners and hundreds of loyal individual donors throughout Flagstaff, we are excited to make our new vision a reality.
Most recently, HFHNA entered into a partnership with the development of Timber Sky. This partnership provides enough land to build 48 starter homes! This exciting development will only be possible with support through donations from individuals, businesses, churches and civic groups who will be invested in this housing solution.
Flagstaff, now is our time to make a big impact to help those who serve our food, educate our children, run nonprofits, and provide so many other services that each of us depends on in one form or another. Contributions can be made at habitatflagstaff.org. Let’s start building together! FBN
By Eric Wolverton
Eric Wolverton is the executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Northern Arizona.
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