"If You Could Afford to Live Here, You'd Already Be Home!"

Benish and Roehl made themselves fixtures at Chaska Chamber of Commerce meetings and took every opportunity to get the mayor’s ear with a message that Chaska needed to do something about its lack of affordable housing. And initially, they encountered some resistance, Benish recalls. The city wanted the jobs and tax base that came with companies like Lake Region, he says, but its citizens, who still number only about 25,000, wanted their community to stay “rural,” a place where they could feel they knew their neighbors and there weren’t a lot of strangers around.

Roehl, too, says it took time to get their message across, and that it was good fortune that “the mayor here in Chaska—the previous mayor and the current mayor—were proponents of a healthy community. That’s something you’ll hear a lot here in Chaska” these days, she says, “that a healthy community is a place that you can live in the place you work and go to school, and you provide housing commensurate with the people working in your area.”

Trusts and Progress

Chaska eventually chose to go about that in a couple of ways. Kevin Ringwald, the city’s director of planning and development, helped form the relationship with Central Community Housing Trust that began four years ago. He says he’s watched opportunities to find affordable housing in Chaska narrow over the past 15 to 20 years, and now he sees people overcome by the prices they’re confronted with.

“They tell me, ‘Wow, it’s more expensive than I thought’,” he says. “And I’m hearing that more from middle managers. Whether it’s medical device manufacturers or teachers, if they can’t live here, eventually they’ll find another job. The longer they’re here, the stronger our companies and schools will become. And people being more connected to their community means they’ll invest more dollars and energy in it.”

What Central Community Housing Trust brought to bear in Chaska is the same public-private funding model that it’s used successfully on other projects. The trust’s housing developments are paid for mostly—about 70 or 80 percent—with private funds, explains Gina Ciganik, a vice president with the trust. Private funding is derived from a variety of sources: commercial loans; limited-partner equity from investors who get federal tax credits in return for their backing of affordable housing; foundation grants; and individual and corporate donations and in-kind services.

Public money is often in the form of a loan with a long-term deferral of payments. Loans come from cities, counties, the Metropolitan Council, or the state, particularly the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency.

For Chaska’s Clover Field Marketplace project, about 23 percent of funds came from public sources and 77 percent from private sources. At the same time, the Central Community Housing Trust picked up critical ongoing support for its mission from local employers. Lake Region Manufacturing is just one of several Chaska companies that made multiyear commitments of several thousand dollars annually to the trust.

When Clover Field Marketplace opens next summer, qualified renters—those whose income is about 50 to 60 percent of the metro area’s median income of $78,500—will be able to rent the units that are designated “affordable” for rates that range from $650 to $900 per month for a one- to three-bedroom apartment.

Ringwald is fielding so many inquiries from other communities about Clover Ridge and the mixed-use Marketplace at its core that he has to turn down many invitations to speak on the topic. He says he hopes the development, which includes a range of housing types and affordability throughout its various segments, will serve as a model not just for other cities but also for other developers to bring housing of all types to Chaska.