Affordable housing for priced-out Bainbridge workers coming to Bethany Lutheran Church

From about 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., there is a continual flow of traffic from workers crossing the Highway 305 bridge into Bainbridge Island. Though the commuters work there, they can’t afford to live nearby.

The average home value on the island is about $1.15 million, up 0.6% from last year, according to Zillow.

A survey presented in the city’s 2023 Housing Action Plan revealed the severity of the shortage in affordable housing. Of those who were surveyed, 87% disagreed that affordable housing was available for people of all economic statuses, and 79% of respondents who worked on the island didn’t live there, most citing a lack of affordable housing.

But with an incoming project decades in the making called Finch Green, Bethany Lutheran Church, its newly formed LLC and Housing Resources Bainbridge (HRB) are partnering to add 22 units into the mix for affordable home ownership.

The development will transform undeveloped land donated by the church – a large portion of its current parking lot and an adjacent grassy plot – into two micro-hoods. The homes will range from 800 to 1,400 square feet and will be added to HRB’s community land trust to keep the units permanently affordable. Buyers in households at or below 80% AMI will be able to purchase the homes on a scale ranging from about $250,000 to $350,000 depending on their household and income.

“The church's mission is to reach out to others and to alleviate problems for others,” said Barbara Deines, Finch Green LLC board member and Bethany Lutheran congregation member. “We have property that's in a location that's ideal.”

Preserving a rich community

Deines worked in the Bainbridge Island for 25 years and watched custodians, food servers and bus drivers have to commute into the island. In her everyday life, she sees restaurant workers, landscapers and other community members doing the same.

“The people who work with our children, the people who are part of the story of Bainbridge Island, can't live on the island,” she said. “We are losing our essence... we're truncating who we are as a community by forcing people off the island… all the people on the island gain when we protect the character, when we enrich the culture and the spirit of the island, so it isn't just something that is for our neighbors who can't afford to live here. It's for all of us.”

Those underserved workers are the exact target Finch Green aims to serve.

Teachers who are new to their job or only have one source of household income, paras, bus drivers, ferry workers, supermarket employees, landscapers, bank tellers, library clerks and more would make up the future Finch Green community, HRB told the city planning commission, referencing example annual income ranging from $46,000 to $76,000.

The demand from such potential buyers is apparent. Buyers who apply to Finch Green will be selected from HRB’s homeownership waitlist which already has about 70 people on it, said executive director Phedra Elliott, and in a separate HRB development project with 31 units, there were about 230 inquiries.

The eventual homeowners won’t just find opportunity for permanently affordable housing at Finch Green – they will also find opportunity for a diverse and tight knit community.

The two micro-hoods will be clustered around communal green spaces and a shared parking lot instead of separate driveways, which foster casual interactions with neighbors, said architect Jonathan Davis. “That's part of our process of what we go through and think of as a way to build community. When you're walking, you stop and chat and meet the neighbors.”

Finch Green will also be composed of “a variety of house types intended to encourage a variety of neighbors, family types and configurations,” Elliott said. The units will have two to four bedrooms, some being single stories, to support both individual and multigenerational households.

The homes will also be within walking distance of public schools, the library, the aquatic center, shopping and transportation, while sitting next to the Bethany Lutheran Church and its preschool, though the housing will have no religious component.

“It's not just creating a housing project,” Davis said. “We're creating a little village here.”

The role of Bethany Lutheran Church

The land Bethany Lutheran was built on was donated to the church in the late 1950s by a community member, and for the last 40 years, the congregation has been looking to pay the generosity forward. In the past three years, they created Finch Green LLC to begin the planning to make the dream into a reality.

“Churches aren't necessarily wealthy institutions,” Deines said. “But, a lot of churches are wealthy in terms of land, so when the crisis became critical on Bainbridge Island, it seemed like a natural connection… Property is worth a lot, so one way to make affordable housing more affordable is to have the land not be an issue.”

The congregation has recognized affordable housing as a number one need on the island, like many of its inhabitants, for a long time, but it wasn’t until 2022 that the fledgling Finch Green project could serve the community with high density.

The City of Bainbridge passed an ordinance in accordance with a 2019 Washington state law that grants bonus density for affordable housing projects on properties owned by religious organizations. The previous iteration of Finch Green would have only had six main houses and six ADUs, Davis said. Finch Green LLC and HRB advocated for the passage of the ordinance, waiting to begin the project until then, in order to achieve maximum utility for the church’s plot of land and double to capacity.

The church has been in conversation with HRB about the project for years, discussing the housing needs of the community and how Bethany Lutheran can best use their land to serve it, but it wasn’t until a year ago that their partnership was made official when HRB had enough time and resources to commit.

HRB, now looped in as a developer, will be able to apply for state grants and other funding and bring the project across the finish line.

From the ground up

Finch Green will cost approximately $14 million in total, which the partners hope to make up in state and federal funding and philanthropy. For now, HRB is in the exploratory phase, Elliott said, but they have conducted neighborhood engagement meetings to hear concerns from nearby residents and get them on board with the project.

So far, Finch Green LLC projects they’ll amass $4 million in donations from island residents and private foundations, Davis said. The money generated from the home sales will also cover a portion of that overall cost.

Elliott anticipates groundbreaking on the project in 2027 with a hopeful finish in 2028 after a 15 to 18 month construction phase. In the meantime, the project will go through design review in April and HRB will be working on grant applications through the summer.

“One thing that makes it kind of remarkable is that it's homeownership,” as other organizations around the state are taking advantage of the density bonuses with rentals, said HRB communications director Tamar Kupiec. “This is the only church that we know that is actually donating the land.”

But the work won’t stop with Finch Green, Deines said. “Our building new homes won't solve the (affordable housing) crisis across the board, but it's going to help. It's going to help relieve the crisis.”

Edit: The cost of the Finch Green homes was corrected.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Bainbridge Island getting affordable housing project at Bethany church