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January 18, 2005
housing coop update
Hi friends-
I thought I would update you all on the housing co-op progress. I have been trying to talk to people who could come chat with us about cooperative housing. The first is Lottie Cohen (a cooperative lawyer in LA). I have emailed her twice and have not heard back from her. I suspect her email is down since one message was returned to me and since she quickly returned my calls before when I contacted her. The second person is Anne Wilson who works with Community Housing Works (an offshoot of Price Charities). CH Works has assisted in financing and developing three limited equity housing cooperatives in San Diego within the last 5 years. I think there's great potential for us to work with them and it would be ideal for them to come and speak with us. They were able to finance these co-ops to such an extant that they would be very reasonable to afford. Check out their website at www.communityhousingworks.org Another potential source of financing in San Diego is through the San Diego Housing Commission. They provide a lot of loans/grants for first time home-buyers and housing developers in San Diego. There adderss is www.sdhc.net. Looking at this info just gets me more excited about the possibility of funding for a project we would be interested in.
After talking to Pastor Antony I have become more convinced that buying co-ops could be a real possibility even if we were to receive limited grants. If an apartment unit with around three rooms costs around $120,000 (the average price per units that I was looking at in City Heights is $105,000 per unit if buying whole complex so 120,000 is my guestimate for the larger units) then mortgage payments could very well be below $1,000 a month. That is less than pastor Antony and most of the families in our church pay currently just to rent. Of course, we will have to get a good chunk of money up front for a down payment but some in our church have money saved up and there's a good chance we could secure some money from the district. Anyways, I'm pretty hopeful for the project and excited about moving forward and having a professional come speak with us. Well, feel free to respond back to me and/or the whole group with ideas, suggestions, concerns, etc. Thanks for you interest and faithfulness.
Peace,
Aaron
Posted by aaronfriberg at January 18, 2005 12:56 PM