Issa-quality

Construction site of Family Village housing complex

ISSAQUAH, WASHINGTON - With Bellevue, Seattle and the Puget Sound just a few miles to the west, the Cascades a few miles to the east, Issaquah, Washington is the kind of town people visit and pretty quickly think "hey, I'd like to live here."

You see it in the Census. Ten years ago, Issaquah had just a tad over 11,000 people. Today more than 30,000 people call it home.

No wonder. Costco has located its corporate headquarters there and both Boeing and Microsoft are a short commute. Outside magazine named it one of the best towns of 2011. And Issaquah's biggest event of the year is Salmon Days. Issaquah, clearly, is not quite your typical bedroom community.

Living there, though, isn't cheap. Per capita income is more than $15,000 over the Washington state average of $29,733 and the median value of a home $173,000 higher. Not exactly a place affordable for a family just getting started.

And too much upscale can have its downsides. "One of the things, I think, that happens if your community doesn't reflect the larger community in terms of economics," former City Council Member John Rittenhouse recently told The Issaquah Press, "is that your community starts becoming isolated and it no longer reflects the community value. You can essentially turn yourself into a gated community," he added, "without the gate."

Thanks to the YWCA of Seattle, King and Snohomish County, that's not going to happen in Issaquah. With land donated by the City and with funding from King County, the King County Housing Authority, the Washington Department of Commerce, the Washington Housing Trust Fund, Boston Capital, private corporate and foundation support, ARCH - A Regional Coalition of Housing - the Recovery Act and HUD, in September 2011 it celebrated the grand opening of Family Village, a $53 million, 146-unit workforce housing complex in the Issaquah Highlands.

Like a lot of other affordable housing projects proposed a few years back, Family Village might never have happened. Its original financing package assumed some of the capital costs would be covered by the sale of Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Then the mortgage market collapsed, the boom went bust and investors became wary.

Fortunately, President Obama proposed and the Congress adopted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which included a Tax Credit Assistance Program to, explained HUD Secretary Donovan, "jump start" projects stalled by the market downturn. With $13 million in TCAP funds, provided by the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, Family Village moved forward.

View of completed Family Village housing complex

The result is impressive. No surprise for a project in the Evergreen State, Family Village is greener than green. Thanks to water recycling and high-efficiency toilets, for example, the complex will cut its water bill by some 40 percent. State-of-the-art wall, ceiling and window assembly technology will result in a 25 percent reduction in energy costs. And, of course, the light-bulbs are energy-efficient, interior and exterior lights will dim automatically and solar panels grace the roof of each building.

"It's very heartwarming to see it come to life," said YWCA Housing Director Linda Hall, "It's one thing to have the bricks and sticks, but it's something else to have the people there."

"Most of the residents," reported The Press, "earn 50 percent or less of the median income of King County, or less than $40,700 for a family of four." Depending on unit size, rents range from just under $400 to $1,145 a month. "We want to make sure that people don't overextend themselves," explained Hall, but "we also don't want to price them out."

People like Lizzie Webb, a survivor of domestic abuse who is a lifelong resident of Issaquah. For her, Family Village is an affordable "safety net" without which that's allowed her to "stay here in my community" where she has "friends and family" and "roots."

The same is true for other residents of Family Village. They include bank tellers, teachers, health care workers, store clerks, waiters and cooks for whom it's pretty easy to get to and from work at area employers like Bellevue Community College, Costco, Fred Meyer, Walgreens, Catholic Health Services, Cascade Bank and Redmond Town Center thanks to the transit mall just across the street from where they live.

Exactly as planned, Family Village "is bringing people together from all walks of life," noted Hall. "That's the intent. When people connect and connect in meaningful ways, great things can happen."

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