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Noji Gardens: A New Frontier for Manufactured Housing While the technology boom in the late 1990's fueled a burgeoning local economy in King County, Washington, some low- and moderate-income homeseekers, unable to afford the increasing costs, have been left in the lurch. Inflated construction and land costs and a lack of affordable housing drove the price of housing beyond what most of these homebuyers could afford. "The problem was a basic housing shortage," recalled Tanesha Van Leuven, Community Development Planner with HomeSight, a nonprofit organization founded in 1990 to develop affordable housing in the Seattle area. "There were few construction starts and few of the units coming on line were priced for low-income families." "We offered all of these tools," said Van Leuven, referring to the array of homebuyer education and financial assistance resources that HomeSight provides for low- and moderate-income homebuyers. "But the only way to make the units affordable would be to reduce the cost of construction." In 1998 HomeSight began construction on Noji Gardens, a 75-unit housing development containing a mix of 51 two-story manufactured housing units with 24 traditional "stick-built" houses - a combination of building types never before tried in the Pacific Northwest. According to Van Leuven, by using manufactured housing, HomeSight was able to reduce the cost of Noji Gardens by approximately 15 percent. That cost savings, combined with HomeSight's homebuyer assistance, made almost all 75 units affordable to families earning 60 to 80 percent of the area's median income. The subdivision demonstrates that manufactured housing and stick-built housing can blend to create a homogeneous and attractive neighborhood. "We did walking tours of the neighborhood," says Van Leuven, "and people couldn't tell the difference [between the manufactured and stick-built housing]." Six state-of-the-art floor plan designs were developed for Noji Gardens, two of which are now the most popular models in the manufactured housing industry. One particularly innovative feature of the plans, the hinged roof design, permits the unit to be transported and then the roof is lifted to the standard pitch when the home is set on its site. The final phase of construction of Noji Gardens was completed in December 2002, and all of the homes have been purchased. Because the manufactured units were attached to permanent foundations, HomeSight could convert the titles from personal to real property. This enabled purchasers to secure permanent financing through any number of banking institutions. HomeSight also provided purchasers with down payment assistance. Nearly all of the homeowners are first-time homebuyers. The community is racially mixed: 45 percent of the purchasers are Asian, 25 percent are African-American, 2 percent Hispanic, and 28 percent Caucasian. Incomes of the buyers range from 45 to 120 percent of area median income. With Noji Gardens under their belt, HomeSight is planning new projects that use manufactured housing to reduce construction costs, including a 35-unit development in the nearby city of Everett, Washington. The 2-story prototypes also diversified the product line for a struggling manufactured housing industry. Since Noji Gardens, the plant that manufactured its 51-units has secured orders for hundreds of these 2-story units throughout the Northwest.
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