Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Dickerson Estates is one of two developments in the town's Roanoke-Lee Street neighborhood built through a public-private partnership between Blacksburg's housing office and Christiansburg-based Community Housing Partners Corp.

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• Tour Blacksburg's newest, most energy-efficient affordable homes in an audio slideshow

The builders

• Community Housing Partners Corp., a nonprofit design-build and real estate management firm, formed in 1975 as Project Home Repair and was later renamed Virginia Mountain Housing.
• In 2001, the company was incorporated under its current name. It specializes in building, rehabilitating and managing affordable housing projects in Virginia, Florida and North Carolina.
• According to IRS records, in 2005 Community Housing Partners managed $53.8 million in assets and had a $27.4 million budget. President Janaka Casper's salary was $186,200, and the company's top five employees had combined salaries totaling $374,200.
• Sources: communityhousingpartners.org and guidestar.org

Blacksburg affordable housing

• Overall cost of Roanoke-Lee streets project: $2.5 million
• Home price: $173,500 for a two-bedroom unit
• Sample first mortgage: $91,500 at 4.5 percent interest
• Sample second mortgage: $80,000 at zero percent interest, payments deferred for 30 years
• Closing cost assistance: Up to $3,000
• Sample mortgage payment: $613
• Residents required to put 100 hours of sweat equity work into the home
• Sources: Prospect Street residents and Community Housing Partners Corp.

Map

• Where the houses are

BLACKSBURG -- It was 3:15 p.m. on a Thursday and cars streamed into the parking lot of Dayspring Christian Academy on Prospect Street as parents came to collect their kids.

But literature and physical education teacher Jon Bluey emerged from the melee on foot and quickly walked a half-block to the new house he shares with wife, Kate, and Labrador mix, McCoy.

Earlier that day Bluey's next-door neighbor, Brian Niese, left his house and walked three blocks in the other direction to his job as shipping and receiving manager at Tech Bookstore, leaving the family car with his wife, Elizabeth, and 16-month-old son, Jonathan. He walked back home about 6 p.m. to enjoy dinner cooked in the crock pot.

Neither of these young families would have settled in Blacksburg, they say, if not for the town's two newest subdivisions -- Dickerson Estates and Bixby Court. Combined, the downtown developments house 14 families in energy-efficient, affordable homes only a short walk from jobs, shopping and entertainment.

Built through a public-private partnership between Blacksburg's housing office and Christiansburg-based Community Housing Partners Corp., the $2.5 million project located in the town's Roanoke-Lee Street neighborhood is a pilot program for expanding affordable, environmentally friendly housing in Blacksburg.

The developments also accomplish other town goals such as redeveloping deteriorating neighborhoods, encouraging workers to commute via sidewalks instead of streets, clustering new development in urban areas and modeling green building techniques.

For Kate Bluey, buying her first home means no more hours spent at the laundromat. For the Nieses, it means a back yard for Jonathan to play in. And for all the residents, it means a chance to build financial security.

The two- and three-bedroom units sold for $173,500 and $184,500. But low-interest and no-interest loans and other assistance quilted together by Community Housing Partners from various state sources bought down the mortgages. Some were less than $100,000.

And the value of the homes, as of most real estate in Blacksburg, is likely to rise in the next few years. If residents sell their homes in the next 30 years, however, part of the assistance they've received must be repaid.

To purchase a unit, buyers' incomes had to fall below the federally mandated median income for Blacksburg. For a family of four, that means incomes below $46,100.

Those who qualified for the program include a Virginia Tech biologist, a teacher, a youth counselor, a homemaker and a single mother with children.

"They work and have good credit," said Janaka Casper, president of Community Housing Partners. "But they just can't afford to put aside enough to buy a house."

"We're not poor," said Kate Bluey, the youth counselor. But without the project, she and husband Jon "couldn't be homeowners."

In fact, a town survey of all Roanoke-Lee Street neighborhood residents found more than 80 percent of them could qualify for similar housing. And U.S. Census estimates show about 18,800 Blacksburg residents, or almost half the town's population, may meet the standards for assistance.

But the census numbers can be skewed, given the large Virginia Tech student population, many of whom look poor on paper but can count on their parents' salaries, Blacksburg Housing Manager Matt Hanratty said.

So far, the Roanoke-Lee Street project seems a promising, if small, success. The homes went on the market in October and were sold by mid-January. But it's unclear how far similar subsidized projects can go in addressing the overall problem of affordable housing in Virginia's largest town.

The median value of a Blacksburg house is $144,000, according to the 2000 census. That's $18,600 higher than the state median. But in practice, it's difficult to buy a home in Blacksburg for less than $200,000.

Those and other market realities are pushing some homebuyers into outlying areas.

"When you displace your workforce, there are consequences," Casper said. Commuters put more traffic on the town's roads and more carbon dioxide in the air. The costs in time and money of daily driving also make working families poorer.

A 2002 congressional report found that across the country demand for low and moderately priced homes is growing. But housing prices are rapidly outpacing wages. And in Blacksburg, strict development regulations can also push up prices.

"The cost to develop a lot in the Town of Blacksburg makes workforce housing ... virtually impossible," residential developer Jeanne Stosser wrote in an e-mail. "Unless you are dealing with a grant program, there is not any way to build ... housing at a price that the average-income individual can afford."

Although the town council and staff have been working on this issue for years, progress has been slow, Town Manager Marc Verniel said.

Officials have in the past tried to encourage affordable housing through proffers, voluntary restrictions developers offer to encourage approval of new subdivisions. But they were hard to enforce, Verniel said.

Councilman Don Langrehr has for several months advocated writing density bonuses into the zoning rules to allow developers to build more housing on less land, which theoretically drives down home prices. But such developments usually stir the ire of neighbors.

In 2005, Stosser proposed a development that would have included single-family homes and more affordable town homes.

Despite its use of design concepts encouraged by Blacksburg zoning and development plans -- closely packed housing surrounded by open space -- the plan was nixed by neighbors and a large majority of the council, who complained the housing was too dense.

"I think we have to get more creative than lowering development standards," Blacksburg Mayor Ron Rordam said.

He wants instead to find ways to integrate affordable housing into larger, privately funded developments and is looking to communities in other states that are trying new approaches.

For now, however, federal entitlement funding, for which Blacksburg's growing population qualified in 2004, is the most effective tool the town has.

Each year the town receives between $700,000 and $800,000 for projects to benefit low- to moderate-income residents, including homelessness prevention programs, subsidized child care services, new parks and emergency home repairs. More than $300,000 of the Roanoke-Lee Street project was funded with the town's entitlement money.

Even with that subsidy, the project does not help very low-income residents and those on fixed incomes, Councilman and Housing Advisory Board member Tom Sherman told a meeting of the Montgomery County League of Women Voters this week.

There are also nagging concerns about the long-term viability of federal entitlement funds. In the past two years, Congress has cut the program by about 15 percent, Hanratty said.

The housing board is working on a strategic plan for future affordable housing projects that Sherman said he hopes will help lower-income residents.

The plan will be ready for public comment in mid-March, Sherman said.

Community Housing Partners Corp. wants to build another affordable housing development in Blacksburg, Casper said.

Hanratty said the town has several hundred thousand dollars it can spend on land for such a project. The challenge is finding the right land at the right price.

Who can get 'affordable' housing aid

The 2006 federal median income for a family of four was $56,700. Those making 80 percent or below the median, based on household size, may qualify for housing assistance.