If you were in south Corvallis on the morning of Thursday, May 7, you would have been hard-pressed to miss the sight: Two small houses, each about 1,100 square feet, were being moved from an area where they had been, at one time, scheduled for demolition.

In their new locations, the old houses will be pioneers of a new approach to homeownership that could, in a small but effective way, make housing more affordable in Corvallis.

It's part of a "community land trust" program that's been planned for years by Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services. The idea, in essence, is to make housing more affordable by taking the price of the land on which the housing sits out of the equation.

So, last month, the agency moved the two houses, which had been rentals, from property it owned as part of its Alexander Court development to another parcel of land it owns nearby.

The agency will rehabilitate the houses and then put them up for sale to qualified buyers. But the agency's land trust will continue to own the land on which the houses sit.

The result? When you subtract out the value of the land, the sale price of the houses likely will be about $110,000 each - less than half the price of a typical home sale in Corvallis.

Affordable housing can be tough to find in Corvallis, and the results of that shortage percolate through our community in unexpected and usually unwelcome ways. (Ask any Corvallis School District administrator concerned about enrollment trends for just one example.)

And for many young families, a crucial first step toward economic security still is buying that first house.

The trip last month for those two houses covered only about a half-mile. But for the families who move into those houses, that trip could be the start of a journey to increased prosperity, and it won't be just the families that prosper.

FYI

To learn more about the Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services community land trust program, call the agency's Garrick Harmel at 752-7220.