Expanding on its role as community educator and convener, HRB creates a quarterly speaker series, in partnership with the Bainbridge Library, featuring leading voices on housing and related issues from academia, journalism, government, and advocacy. The series kicks off with Gregg Colburn, University of Washington faculty member and author of Homelessness Is a Housing Problem.
HRB enters another partnership with Central Highland Homes, which is developing a 73-townhome development near Virginia Mason Medical Center off High School Road. The developer will make 31 homes available at below market rate for HRB to sell to households earning at or below 80% area median income. As part of our community land trust, these homes will remain permanently affordable, serving generation after generation of islanders to come.
Bethany Lutheran Church had long envisioned using its land to address the affordable housing crisis on Bainbridge Island. In 2019, the state passed a law requiring cities and towns to grant religious organizations an increased density bonus to build affordable housing on their land, helping the church turn a longtime dream into a financially viable project. Early 2024, Finch Green LLC, the nonprofit formed by the church to guide the project, and HRB enter a partnership in which the church will donate a portion of its land to HRB, and HRB will develop 22 homes in collaboration with Finch Green LLC. The homes will become part of the HRB community land trust. HRB’s capital campaign for the Ericksen Community and HRB at the Oliver is enlarged to raise funds for the new neighborhood.
The Bainbridge Island Land Trust acquires three 5-acre parcels of forest habitat near Lovgreen Road and SR 305. It decides to dedicate its limited resources to conserving and restoring the most ecologically valuable acreage and to sell a small portion of one parcel to HRB for affordable housing development. HRB will build a small community of homes in accordance with the city’s existing zoning and affordable housing policy.
HRB closes on 13 units at Oliver Bainbridge, replacing the 13 affordable homes that were lost when Housing Kitsap sold the site in 2019. The new owner planned to redevelop the land with adjoining parcels as a market-rate 80-unit rental community, but like HRB and the community at large, shared an interest in preserving the original affordable homes in one form or another. HRB and the developer entered into a partnership in which 13 homes were sold to HRB at their cost to build. HRB calls its acquisition HRB at the Oliver.
The Ericksen Community adds 12 1-bedroom/1-bath homes and 6 3-bedroom/2-bath homes to the HRB community land trust. The unit mix reflects the community’s greatest needs. Single-person households dominate the HRB rental waitlist. And, prior to its completion, there were only eight affordable 3-bedroom apartments on the island, all of which were owned by HRB.