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

“With an expanding work force, it was certainly needed—and there needs to be more,” Ringwald says. “We want to be equally welcoming to CEOs, middle-income workers, and those at the bottom of the pay scale.”

Anther City of Chaska initiative will help in that regard: the Chaska Community Land Trust, incorporated in 2002. In essence, the trust takes land out of the home-buying equation, making home ownership feasible for buyers who are generally at 50 to 60 percent of the area’s median income by selling them only the house itself and leasing them the land the house stands on for a nominal fee of $25 or $30 a month.

Soon after it established the trust, Chaska amended its comprehensive development plan to require that 25 percent of all new housing constructed in the city be affordable, and that an additional 5 percent be “permanently affordable.” Permanence is what the trust brings, allowing not just the first homeowner but also subsequent owners to buy the house at a manageable price, while each in turn has a chance to gain some equity.

The trust sells its homes—15 so far, with plans to add another 5 this year—at 25 percent or more below their market value. It can do that because, most often, the lots have been donated to the city by developers in exchange for expedited processing and discounted fees on their projects. In other cases, the trust has received grants from the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, the Metropolitan Council, and other public or private sources to buy a property.

When a trust homeowner is ready to sell and move on, that homeowner is allowed to capture 25 percent of his or her equity in the house, 100 percent of the appraised value of any improvements made to the house, plus 25 percent of equity in the land—although the trust remains the deed holder on the land. The trust then goes on to sell the house to a new qualifying buyer.

Like the Central Community Housing Trust, the Chaska Community Land Trust has multiyear commitments of financial support from local employers—10 of them, including Lake Region Manufacturing, Ridgeview Medical Center, animal feed ingredient maker Quali Tech, and high-tech materials-handing company Entegris.

“Larger businesses are willing to participate because they have bigger issues with [employee] attraction and retention, so they’re interested in trying to build a community,” says Mary Welch, executive director of the land trust. “They support long-term investment because they have a stake in it.”

Lake Region’s Benish calls the land trust “a stroke of genius.” Currently, about 32 percent of Lake Region Manufacturing’s production workers come from Minneapolis, St. Paul, or inner-ring suburbs, and some have commutes of an hour or more one way. Benish says he hopes the land trust and projects like Clover Field Marketplace will allow some of them to move closer to their jobs.

“They’re anxious to move out closer to where the plant is,” Benish says. “Oftentimes, they indicate to us it’s more of an issue than they ever expected.”

Roehl, while definitely an advocate of the affordable rental and ownership options represented by the two trusts, says she hopes the families who rely on this help to move into Chaska can eventually move out of trust properties. “To me the ultimate is to get land and home ownership,” she says. “But if they have these steppingstones, it actually gives them hope.”