May 17, 2007

Jason and Margaret Morgan and their children Cami, left, and Acala, front, in front of the Home, Inc.-owned house they are renting on Xenia Avenue. The Morgans will soon move to their own home in the Thistle Creek development.

By Diane Chiddister

Several years ago, Jason and Margaret Morgan, newly married and each with a child from a former marriage, tried to start a new life together in Jason’s hometown in southeastern Texas.

But, for many reasons, the town was not a good fit. A professional portrait artist, Jason didn’t fit in with peers who prized guns and shopping at Walmart, and he longed to find a community that valued the arts as he did. He and Margaret also wanted a place with a lively downtown and a sense of community, a place where their kids could roam free and feel they belonged. On a visit over spring break, 2005, the family found such a place in Yellow Springs, near Margaret’s hometown of Wilmington, and they fell in love with the village.

“We saw people riding bikes and standing on the street downtown having conversations. It was a breath of fresh air. We wanted to be a part of that. We wanted our kids to be a part of that,” Jason said in a recent interview.

Excited, the couple went online to check real estate. But their excitement dimmed when they couldn’t find anything they could afford. Finally, a local realtor suggested the couple try Home, Inc. Now, two years later, the Morgans will soon move into newly built Home, Inc. house in Thistle Creek, the development by local builder Jonathan Brown. The move will culminate the Morgans’ several-year search for a home for their new family, which includes 13-year-old Acala and 18-year-old Cami.

The Morgans will occupy one of six new Home, Inc. homes to be built in the next several months as part of the Thistle Creek development. When the homes are finished, Home, Inc. will have provided Yellow Springs with 12 new or rehabbed affordable homes since its inception.

But Home, Inc. could do much more, according to Executive Director Marianne MacQueen in a recent interview. It has 30 people — families and singles — on its waiting list who want to buy homes in Yellow Springs. It also has the funds, through state and federal grants, to build about six homes a year in the village.

But as of now, the organization has no place to build.

The past few months have offered mainly setbacks for Home, Inc. In March Home, Inc.’s proposal for constructing two new apartments on its Xenia Avenue property was turned down by the Board of Zoning Appeals. And in April, the Fogg farm annexation, which developer Doug Miller said would include some affordable housing, fell through.

The March BZA action took the organization by surprise, since the rejected proposal was a significantly scaled back version of an initial plan to construct four housing units on the property. That plan was discouraged by the Village Planning Commission in February after Xenia Avenue neighbors expressed concerns about the density of the project, and its potential for increased noise and traffic. Consequently, Home, Inc. went back to the drawing board and submitted to Planning Commission its smaller plan. The planners gave conditional approval if the BZA granted variances to the Home Inc plan. However, the BZA turned down 3–1 the variances needed for an apartment, with Andrew Brouard, Becky Campbell and Joseph Giardullo voting against and Ted Donnell voting for the plan. BZA member Kingsley Perry, a Home, Inc. former board member, recused himself from the vote.

The BZA action, and the amount of controversy surrounding the Fogg farm proposal, has led some Home, Inc. supporters to wonder about villagers’ level of commitment to affordable housing.

“Between the Fogg farm not coming to fruition and the other small project not working out, I was very discouraged,” MacQueen said in a recent interview.

The unsuccessful projects on the Fogg farm and Xenia Avenue also followed several years of frustration during which MacQueen and Home, Inc. directors attempted to procure scattered lots in town for the development of affordable housing. That effort, which involved contacting about 60 property owners, yielded only three lots for Home, Inc., MacQueen said. One lot, owned by the Lawson family on Dayton Street, yielded two new Home, Inc homes and Home, Inc. built another home on the third lot, located on Xenia Avenue and previously owned by Paul Webb.

But that effort produced far fewer lots for affordable homes than Home, Inc supporters had hoped. The effort also ended up suffering from the challenges involved in finding owners who wanted to sell lots at the same time that funds were available. And the organization also had high hopes dashed, several years ago, when a joint project for six affordable houses on Birch III fell through when the builder, Oberer Construction, pulled out. But that loss prompted Home, Inc. to seek another development, which led to its collaboration with Brown at Thistle Creek.

Some things are going well for Home, Inc. Its membership remains enthused and energized, according to Home, Inc. Board President Stan Bernstein, and a capital campaign this year has raised $214,000 toward its goal of $250,000. The organization is now able to employ, in addition to its executive director, a homebuyer services coordinator, Erich Pitcher, and a volunteer coordinator, Tom Osborne, both funded by VISTA.

At its annual membership meeting in March, the Home, Inc. membership decided that, after eight years focused on building or rehabbing single family homes, the organization will focus more on providing rental units. The need is obvious, according to MacQueen, who stated that the 2002 Men’s Group Cost of Living Study showed that rentals had fallen from almost 40 percent of local housing stock in 1970, to just above 30 percent of the housing stock in 2000.

It makes sense for Home, Inc. to focus on rentals, since rental units are where many young couples with families begin their lives together, and if Yellow Springs lacks affordable rental stock it will attract fewer young people to the community. (See “Other Voices,” page 4).

But providing affordable rental housing offers its own challenges, MacQueen said, including intense competition for federal grant dollars. And, of course, there needs to be a place to put those rental homes, and so far there is none.

As Home, Inc. continues its efforts to provide affordable housing to Yellow Springs, the Morgans are deeply grateful that they have benefitted from the group’s efforts and can buy their own home in Yellow Springs. For Jason Morgan, who won a mural contest at YSI Incorporated and will be painting a mural on the side of that business most of the summer, their new home is a new beginning for his family.

“We feel the house is the beginning of the nest building for our family and marriage,” he said. “It’s the place we plan to live the rest of our lives.”

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com