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Keene housing development info session is tonight

KEENE — Adirondack Roots will host an information session tonight on the Both Meadow Trail development, a four-unit housing development for moderate-income families being built in Keene. The session is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Keene Town Hall.

Adirondack Roots representatives will present information about the homes, including sale prices and income qualifications, at the session. Applications will be made available to the public soon after.

“This is really a great opportunity for our community members because (the homes) will be very affordable,” Adirondack Roots Executive Director Megan Murphy said.

The Elizabethtown-based housing nonprofit, formerly the Housing Assistance Program of Essex County, has been working on creating housing on the Both Meadow lot for years. They purchased the land where the houses will be built from former Keene Supervisor Tom Both and his wife, Alaina, years ago at a discount, with the understanding that it would be used for affordable housing. Adirondack Roots later sold some of the land to Little Peaks Early Childhood and Preschool Center to house its facility. Together, the housing project and Little Peaks address two needs identified in Keene’s 2021 strategic plan: more childcare and more affordable housing options.

The project received funding in 2023 via the New York state Affordable Homeownership Opportunity Program, which is administered through the state Division of Homes and Community Renewal. Construction is gearing up on the property, though it was delayed slightly by the rainstorms that accompanied the remnant of Hurricane Beryl last week.

“It’s coming very soon. There’s actually equipment on the property now,” Murphy said. “We are hoping that we will have homeowners in these homes by the end of the year.”

The houses will be owner-occupied, with the Adirondack Community Housing Trust owning the land underneath the houses. Homeowners will pay $300 for ground lease costs. Murphy said this system, called a shared equity model, will help keep the homes “perpetually affordable” when owners may decide to sell in the future.

“That ground lease, that creates the partnership with the homeowners,” she said. “It keeps us a part of the sale interaction moving forward.”

Resales will also be beholden to a resale formula, which restricts owners from reselling the homes at a significant markup. Lake Placid-based housing nonprofit Homestead Development Corporation, which recently began selling the 16 townhome units at its Fawn Valley development, uses a similar formula requirement to ensure that future homeownership remains attainable at their developments.

Adirondack Roots’ Both Meadow Trail development has certain income qualifications for applicants — households applying to purchase one of the four homes must earn at or below 100% of the area median income. The exact figure for AMI depends on how large a household is, Murphy said.

“The income qualification changes depending on the size of the household. So, for one person, it’s one number; For two people, it’s slightly larger. The larger the family gets, the larger the income qualification is,” she said.

More specific AMI and income qualification figures will be available at tonight’s meeting, she added.

Application process

Applications for the four homes will soon be on Adirondack Roots’ website — adirondackroots.org — and paper copies will also be available at the Keene Town Hall, the Keene Public Library and the Keene Valley Library. Murphy said Adirondack Roots can also fax or mail paper applications to people who live farther away and can’t use or access the online application.

“We always want to be mindful of the digital divide. We always think that people can get everything off the internet, but that doesn’t always work for everybody,” she said.

Since there are state funds tied up in the housing development, the applications must be considered on a first-come, first-served basis — in line with the Fair Housing Act, Murphy said.

“We’ll start moving through folks as soon as we get those applications. They will be date and time-stamped,” she said. “Then, we will start working with them to be sure that they’re income-qualified, which would be the first hurdle.”

If applicants are income-qualified, they’ll begin working with an Adirondack Roots housing counselor to figure out their credit score for a potential mortgage, a down payment, bills and other new responsibilities that come with homeownership.

“The housing counselor process educates people just on the idea of being a homeowner — all of the things you need to think about,” Murphy said. “I wish, when I bought 24 years ago, that I’d gone through housing counseling. Because it really gets you thinking about all the different things about being a homeowner.”

The bottom line of the application process, Murphy said, is to make sure that the selected applicants are well-prepared for homeownership.

“We want our families to own these homes as long as they want to own them,” she said.

Starting at $4.75/week.

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