CAC plans four houses at Palouse

With an eye on creating housing for young, working families, Community Action Center in Pullman just purchased an acre of land at Palouse.

Four new homes will be built on the site, according Dale Miller, CAC housing program manager.

The land is in Palouse on Palouse Cove Road near the CAC senior housing facility. A contractor for the project has not yet been selected.

CAC has a similar housing development in Colfax in the Hauser Addition. Two houses are complete and occupied, and two have foundations and are expected to be finished this summer. The houses at Colfax are modular units which were moved onto foundations.

The developments are part of a department of Housing and Urban Development program to provide affordable homes to “moderate income working people.”

“It’s been hard for people who are just working and they have a young family and they have a non-professional job to become homeowners in their community,” Miller said.

CAC received a grant from HUD in 2007 for $200,000 to develop the program.

Once the complexes in Colfax and Palouse are finished, CAC will turn its sights on other small towns within driving distance of Pullman and Moscow.

Two of the homes in Palouse will be single story with three bedrooms. The other two will be two story homes, also with three bedrooms each. The second floor, Miller said, will not be a full floor.

Colfax home-owner Stephanie Rohrbaugh-Ayers said her family’s options for housing in Colfax were limited.

She and husband Nate, who works at Schweitzer Engineering, were searching for a place that could house them and their two children.

“We were looking at houses in the price range of $120,000. That just doesn’t buy you much around here,” Rohrbaugh-Ayers said.

When the Rohrbaugh-Ayers heard of the available houses through CAC, they applied and learned they qualified.

“We get interest rates that are completely reasonable, never pay more than $900 a month,” she said.

Miller said the financing for purchase of the houses is completed through USDA. which loans up to 85 percent of the purchase. The USDA mortgages carry an interest rate which varies according to each family’s income. The mortgage rate ranges from 1 percent up the 4.75 percent,

CAC covers the other 15 percent of the purchase which is deferred. That sum is paid back to CAC when a family sells the home. The payment is then plowed back into the program.

Buyers are also required to put a portion of sweat equity into the home. Rohrbaugh-Ayers said after they moved in, they completed personal touches on the home such as interior painting and the yard landscaping.