Two Bolinas-born sisters and their families were selected at random to live in the new prefabricated Habitat for Humanity homes on Overlook Drive. Eleanor Bagley-Suda and Lynn Bagley-Spalding, whose families once owned businesses downtown, said they are looking forward to raising their toddlers as next-door neighbors in their hometown. They were chosen from a pool of 26 applicants.
“We feel so grateful to finally have affordable and stable housing here,” Ms. Bagley-Spalding said. “We keep saying that we won the life lottery.”
The prefabricated homes are the first of four to be sold by Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco in partnership with the Bolinas Community Land Trust. The mortgages will be held by Habitat and do not require a down payment or accrue interest. Habitat owns the land but will offer families renewable and inheritable 99-year leases that provide most of the rights of conventional home ownership except for certain use and resale restrictions.
Annie O’Connor, the administrative director at the land trust, said the company that built the houses, Villa Homes, was an essential part of the project’s cost-effectiveness. “It’s only because of these homes that we’ve been able to source this project,” she said. “I think it’s an incredible opportunity to celebrate how miraculous it is [that] these Bolinas sisters from a historical, multigenerational family have affordable housing.”
Applicants had to qualify for mortgage payments capped at 30 percent of annual income; for three-person households, the minimum gross annual income had to be between $83,900 and $134,200, and households had to have three to five people. Of the applicants, six identified as Hispanic, five as Asian or two or more races, and the rest as white. Twenty were Marin residents, 11 of whom were from Bolinas.
As part of the deal, the families will be required to put 250 hours of sweat equity into the property—work they have already started. Ms. Bagley-Suda, an esthetician, and her husband, Dan, a hairdresser, have lived in Oakland since 2012 and have an 18-month-old son. Mr. Suda expressed excitement about providing a service the town lacked.
Ms. Bagley-Spalding is a portrait photographer and her husband, Andrew, is a water operator for the Bolinas Community Public Utility District. The two have lived in Bolinas for the past eight years, and said they were constantly forced to move as owners sold their properties or turned them into short-term rentals. Last month, their son turned 1.
The sister’s grandparents, Gwenn Spangler and Buddy Spangler, owned The Shop downtown for 25 years until it was sold and renamed the Coast Café. After that they ran the Blue Heron Bed & Breakfast for 11 years. Amid the 2008 recession, Buddy fell ill and the family, strapped for cash, sold the business and two houses they owned in town.
The Overlook homes will be ready to move into in April, said Arianne Dar, the executive director of the land trust. Habitat has not yet opened the lottery for two other homes it owns on Aspen Road, which still need a septic system and foundations.
Of the 200 people on the B.C.L.T.’s waitlist, about 100 are current or displaced residents of Bolinas or Stinson Beach, and 30 to 40 households left due to rent increases or home sales. Of the 45 local families on the waitlist, over half live in spaces too small for their family size.
Additionally, of the 43 Bolinas homes listed for rent on Airbnb, the trust said at least 10 were previously rented as long-term units, and the number may be higher. The trust said that only 13 are operated by full-time residents. Based on data from AirDNA, the median monthly revenue from short-term rentals in Bolinas was $7,383.
For information on housing waitlists available through the trust, visit www.BolinasLandTrust.org.