Oly Steed knew she would eventually own the roof over her head. She didn’t think she’d wind up building it.
But recently the 31-year-old mother of two joined hands with eight other eastern Idaho families to raise their new homes on the outskirts of Rigby.
“It will be a lot of work,” said Steed, as she surveyed the bare, rocky ground where the foundation was being dug. “But it’s worth it. It’s worth it to have a home.”
Steed and the others are eastern Idaho’s first participants in a federal program to help low-income families buy their first home, and finance it with the sweat of their brows.
Known as mutual self-help housing, it’s part old-fashioned barn raising and part modern mortgage. The homeowners-to-be must each promise to work 35 hours every week building their nine homes.
In return, they qualify for an interest rate as low as 1 percent on a mortgage financed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, no down payment, a $10,000 state grant to buy part of their land, and the guidance of an experienced home builder.
The program offers a way into a new home for people who might not be able to afford a down payment or regular interest rates, said Dixie Campbell of the Eastern Idaho Special Services Agency. The Idaho Falls-based social service agency is administering the program, which is part of the Agriculture Department’s Rural Housing Service.
It also could resolve a conundrum that has troubled some affordable housing programs: How to help people become self-reliant while still lending them a hand.
“It gives a person an opportunity to work for what they want, to actually own it,” Campbell said.
The fate of the Rigby project may determine whether it becomes a model for other affordable-housing programs. The only project of its kind in Idaho, it comes at a time when Gov. Phil Batt has put the spotlight on affordable housing. At a housing conference he convened, Batt called on leaders to respond to a statewide need for affordable homes.
“There’s a need all around the area. It would be a good program just about anywhere,” Campbell said.
Participants fall within a certain income range and must show they can afford payments on the house. A family of four would need to earn between $18,950 and $30,300 a year, and no more than 41 percent of their income should be dedicated to paying debts.
What they don’t need is experience. Steed will have to learn how to pound nails and heft two-by-fours with hands more accustomed to lifting plates of spaghetti at Louie’s, the Italian restaurant in Idaho Falls where she works as a waitress.
She began saving to buy a house more than a year ago. A single mother raising two daughters, ages 6 and 5, she makes only about $10,000 a year from her part-time work, supplemented by child support.
Steed’s desire to own a home was strengthened last year when a friend with a child was kicked out of a home.
“I just thought, ‘I do not want my kids to never have a place to come back to,’ ” she said.
When Steed first applied to the program, she worried living in a low-income neighborhood might mean more crime and unkempt houses.
Now she is convinced building the homes together will only help cement bonds between the neighbors.
“I think it’ll be nice because you’ll have respect for your neighbors’ stuff,” she said.
The homeowners will have a lot of time to get acquainted. It’s expected to take eight to 10 months to complete the homes. Family and friends can pitch in, but Steed still must work at least 18 hours each week.
To assure people all pitch in, no one is allowed to move in until every home is finished.
Steed already talks about her future neighbors by their first names, predicting who her daughters might play with, pointing out who lives at the end of the block. There is one other single mother in the program; the rest are couples, most with kids.
Their jobs tell the story of blue-collar workers seeking a path to a new home: a roofer, an apprentice plumber, a worker for an excavation company, a sheetrocker, a lab technician at a potato processing plant, a firefighter, a department store employee, and an auto mechanic.
When the houses are finished, blueprints show they will be modest three-and four-bedroom homes. Normally, they would cost upwards of $90,000, said Ron Holt, the project’s building supervisor. But the average mortgage on these homes will be $57,500.
Steed’s house payments will actually be $150 less than the $400 rent she currently pays for an Idaho Falls apartment.
The project calls for 21 homes, with the remainder beginning next spring. They will back up against a row of houses to the north. To the south, just a few blocks away, upscale suburban homes already have risen on the edge of town.
Steed has spent countless hours debating what color to paint the house, deciding which carpets to buy, picking out the refrigerator. Her daughters are already planning a two-story playhouse they will build after the house is finished. She even has a new address: 398 Madsen St.
But for now, the lots are just raw dirt with wooden stakes sprouting at the corners of imaginary houses.
“The real accomplishment will be the completion,” said Campbell.
