This story by Emma Roth-Wells was first published in the Valley News on Jan 15.
WOODSTOCK — Some of Twin Pines Housing projects include dozens of affordable apartments, but another model seeks to make single-family homes affordable, one house at a time.
Last month, the Woodstock Development Review Board approved Twin Pines’ plan to demolish an existing 2,600-square-foot, single-family house at 40 Deer Ridge Way and replace it with a new 1,254-sqaure-foot home on the same foundation footprint.
“It was going be more expensive to renovate that space than simply replace it,” Andrew Winter, Twin Pines’ executive director, said. The new one-story, three-bedroom building is planned to be more energy efficient than the existing structure and have solar panels.
Barnard resident and mental health counselor Kathleen Dolan donated the 1.7-acre parcel assessed by the town at $382,300 to Twin Pines — a White River Junction-based nonprofit affordable housing developer — in 2024.
“Through my work as a counselor and as a resident of this area, I know we need affordable housing,” Dolan said in a phone interview. “It was a no-brainer.”
In 2021, Dolan bought the property for $399,000, according to property records. She had been providing free counseling services for an adolescent girl whose family needed a home.
“Because I was able to afford the property, it seemed like a good solution to their problem,” Dolan said.
When the family moved out this past summer, Dolan knew she wanted the home to stay in the affordable housing ecosystem and that Twin Pines was the organization to do it.
Founded in 1990, Twin Pines Housing owns 665 apartment units and has about 70 homes in their home ownership program in the Upper Valley. Most of these units are reserved for individuals and families with low to moderate incomes.
Twin Pines’ home ownership program typically aims to sell homes at a price affordable to households who earn no more than 120% of the median income for the county where the home is located. The organization does this by using grants to bring the price of a home below its market value.
If a homeowner wants to sell the home in the future, they receive 25% of the increased value of the home and the remaining 75% is used to offset the cost and keep the home affordable for the next buyer.
It will cost around $400,000 to complete the Deer Ridge Way project which is expected to break ground this summer, Winter said.
The home will be sold for between $250,000 and $275,000, he said. Offsetting the cost of the project is a grant of up to $100,000 from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, as well as a private donation.
The planned sale price is well below the median price for a single-family home in Windsor County in 2024, which was $322,500, according to the Vermont Housing Finance Agency, a state chartered nonprofit.
To be a potential buyer of the Deer Ridge Way home, a household would have to meet the income requirements and use the home as their primary dwelling. Twin Pines’ income threshold for a two-person household in Windsor County is generally $96,480, according to the non-profit’s homeownership coordinator Anne Hill.
The single-family house is not the only upcoming project Twin Pines is working on in Woodstock.
Construction is slated to begin this summer on Mellishwood, a senior housing project which when completed is expected to include 39 affordable units on Pleasant Street. The organization is also looking to add four condominiums to the existing 28 rental units at Safford Commons off of Route 4.
“Rental housing is important and obviously in many ways, can have a bigger impact than building a single-family home,” Winter said, “but both are important and needed in the market.”
Kata Sasvari and her husband, Tuck Stocking, bought one of the 14 homes in Starlake Village, one of two affordable housing communities in Norwich, in 2014. They had been renting a condominium in Lebanon and searching for a house to buy for about a year when they came across an advertisement for the Twin Pines’ managed village.
“It didn’t make sense to just be relying on landlords or figuring out what the next place to live in would be if the landlord is selling,” Sasvari said. “We wanted to be more confident in where we are.”
Without Twin Pines’ help, the couple — she is a photographer and he owns the music school, Tuck’s Rock Dojo, in Etna — would’ve only been able to afford a home that needed a lot of maintenance and Sasvari said they’re “not very handy people.”
“As a first-time homeowner, it was scary to buy a place that needs a lot of work done,” she said.
The couple hopes to sell their home someday “so other people can have a great first house like we did,” Sasvari said.
Sasvari and her husband have an 11-year old son who attends school in Norwich.
“I wish there would be more programs like this in every other school district,” she said. “I think everybody could use this kind of help.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Twin Pines program makes single-family homeownership possible for Vermonters.