South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanities believes everybody deserves a place to call home and is taking steps to provide more affordable housing opportunities in Yelm with the construction of a 22-unit development on Longmire Street Northwest.
Elizabeth Walker, chief executive officer of South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity, said the community will be located on Longmire Street in Yelm off of Coates Avenue and is a little over 2 acres in size. She said the development will feature a mix of town homes and cottages — including senior cottages and accessible rooms.
“We’ve got a pretty exciting development going into Yelm. As you know, we have a store presence and we’ve been in the community for a while. Our organization here covers Thurston County as a service area, and we’ve been building in Tumwater. We have a project on the horizon in Olympia, and we’re really excited to be able to expand to Yelm and reach further into the county,” Walker said. “It’s going to be a really nice community. There will be public access on it, and there will be off-street parking. All of the units are highly energy efficient. They use energy-saving appliances. There’s a variety in the housing there.”
Walker added that many different households can live in the new community, stating it will offer two-, three- and four-bedroom homes for applicants, along with accessibility on the first floors and homes on the top floor. The community will also include an accessible-to-all playground. She said that as an organization, South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity is committed to the process of home ownership but recognizes that not everyone has access to home ownership.
“We’re in a housing market that’s really hard for a lot of people to get into. We see throughout the county, Yelm included, that our low- and moderate-income neighbors really can’t afford to purchase a home. That’s the income range we tend to work with,” Walker said. “We’re really looking forward to putting that development in.”
She said qualifiers for the program would include people living in the 30% to 80% range of area-median income, which may include professions like hospital personnel, teachers, service workers, non-profiteers and others.
“They come into our program and they qualify on need and the ability to pay a mortgage. We make sure that the mortgage is super affordable to them, so it’s never exceeding 30% of their household income,” Walker said. “This means they can pay for their home, live in a high-quality home, and have normal money like people should have for things like paying for their kids’ education or going on family vacations — things that really add to the quality of life.”
Walker said the application process for a South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity home begins either online or through a phone call, and the organization will bring anyone interested in for a conversation.
“We do have some volunteer and education requirements to make sure that everyone who is going through this program is super prepped to be a homeowner,” she said. “There’s an information session that folks can attend, and then they go through an application process.”
The application process includes education hours and volunteer hours, and participation in building the home and a neighbor’s home alongside Habitat for Humanity volunteers and staff members. At the end of the process, applicants will qualify for an affordable mortgage with a community lender.
Walker noted that production is increasing “really significantly” in Yelm right now. Recognizing the trend of so little affordability in home ownership right now, the organization is seeking a major increase in production throughout this region over the next five years.
“We’ve built 83 homes since we began in 1989, and we’ll be building 162 over the next five years,” said Tanya Mote, South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity chief advancement officer. “We’re a really volunteer driven organization. We have volunteers in the stores and on the construction site every week. We’d love to have groups of volunteers come out. We have faith-based and service groups come out and join us, as well as individuals. We also host veteran-builds and women-builds events, too. As far as folks wanting to come out and lend a hand, we’d be more than happy to welcome you.”
Walker added that the Yelm development is a big part of the increase in production throughout the South Puget Sound region.
“[The Yelm development is] fitting in our schedule alongside some of our other developments. We’re happy to say that our infrastructure is all of the way in,” Walker said. “Our team has been really pushing to get that in this year. We’re beginning our construction on it, where you’ll see things start raising off the ground, in the early summer of next year.”
