‘We can build our communities the way we want’: The Village at River View offers glimpse into future of affordable housing
A view of one of six townhomes built as part of an affordable housing initiative. The homes are now open to all families living in Bonner County.
Amid a worsening housing crisis in North Idaho and across the country, three Idaho entities are using a unique model to create housing that will remain affordable forever.
Kaniksu Land Trust joined with the Bonner County Housing Agency and Boise-based LEAP Housing to build The Village at River View in Priest River, comprised of six townhomes.
The three-bedroom homes built as part of this affordable housing initiative will be available for purchase to families living and working in Bonner County. Lottery-style drawings for the homes will be held monthly until the homes are all sold at a price of $260,000 each.
Entities like LEAP Housing, whose mission is to develop and preserve affordable housing in Idaho, and Kaniksu Land Trust, which works to conserve the natural and culture values of North Idaho and northwestern Montana, may appear at a glance to have opposing missions. But their goals proved to be complementary.
“With housing costs rising in the urban core, people might avoid going there and they might just build farther out,” said Brian Woodward, chief operating officer at LEAP Housing. “When we do that, we interrupt some of the natural migratory paths and patterns of animals.”
For that reason, Kaniksu Land Trust began to consider addressing regional housing needs as part of its overall mission.
LEAP Housing, meanwhile, previously launched a home ownership education program that helped people with barriers to create and navigate a plan for home ownership. The nonprofit helped about 100 people purchase homes through the program, Woodward said, but it became less effective as housing prices increased.
“Soon, there were no homes in the $200,000 range, and then there was just a little blip of time where there were some homes in the $300,000 range, but those disappeared, as well,” Woodward said. “If we wanted to continue in the direction of helping people buy their own homes, we would have to build our own homes in a different kind of way.”
The home ownership education program gave way to creating one of the Boise area’s first community land trusts. In this model, LEAP Housing acquires land through sales or donations and removes the land cost from the home purchase price.
While the homeowners own the house, the land where it sits is held in trust, ensuring the home stays affordable for generations.
“In many cases, the monthly mortgage payment is competitive to rents in the area,” he said. “That’s an example of people being able to build some equity while paying what they would be paying in rent.”
It’s this model that The Village at River View uses.
Through this partnership with local agencies, Woodward said LEAP Housing aims to provide “technical assistance” for people on the ground in their communities.
“Things like housing are community problems that local communities need to attempt to solve together,” he said. “Market conditions require all of our municipalities to level up their knowledge and open the aperture of what could be possible in their communities when it comes to housing.”
LEAP Housing’s goal is to serve community members and elected leaders alike, providing knowledge and tools that can be used to tackle housing problems at a local level, especially in rural communities.
Woodward emphasized that it's up to residents to shape their communities.
“I hope we are all entering this phase in the history of our country where we’re able to look at what is increasingly a fragmented, mobile and decentralized definition of community and preserve what is good and right about community and community partnerships,” he said. “Where other parts of our society are fragmenting, we cannot afford to fragment in these critical areas, because collectively, we are the community and we can build our communities the way we want.”
The interior of one of the townhomes that make up The Village at River View affordable housing initiative.
Katie Cox, Kaniksu Land Trust director; Ben McGrann, KLT Community Housing Trust board; contractor Bill Daum of Daum Construction, Susie Kubiak of the Equinox Foundation, Chrystle Horvath, Bonner Community Housing Authority, Priest River Mayor Jeff Connolly and Bart Cochran of LEAP Housing take part in a ceremonial groundbreaking of the Potlatch Loop project in 2024.
