Affordable units are hitting the market in the Bay Area city of Lafayette, California. They aren’t for rent. They’re for sale.
Developer Lennar is selling 10 townhouses in its 66-unit development in Lafayette below market rate, the East Bay Times reported. The Brant, which is rising at 3721 Mount Diablo Boulevard, is located in a city where the median value of all owner-occupied housing is $1.4 million and the median gross rent is $2,222.
Of the available units, six will be for people with moderate incomes (about $150,000 a year for a family of four), two will be for low-income families (about $109,000 a year for a family of four) and two more will be for those considered very low-income (about $69,000 a year for a family of four).
For families with moderate incomes, the three-bedroom units are listed for $594,891, the two-bedroom units are listed for $524,446 and the one-bedroom units are asking $452,591. The low-income, two-bedroom units will be sold for $251,745 and the very-low-income, one-bedroom units will sell for $59,920. Any future residents will also have to pay the homeowner association fee of $743.56 a month.
“In wealthy communities across the Bay Area, the issue is not necessarily affordable housing as a target, as much as it is any housing,” Julius Nyanda, project manager for Housekeys — an organization that assists cities and developers with their affordable housing goals — said. “For those communities, they’re high cost for a reason; there’s not a lot of land and units available.”
Another development has attempted to provide affordable housing for the Lafayette community, but it has been notoriously stalled for more than a decade. The Terraces of Lafayette would include 63 units of affordable housing, but a grassroots organization has delayed the project with multiple lawsuits and a ballot measure.
Those who wish to live in the affordable units in The Brant will have to enter the drawing for the townhouses via Housekeys. The drawing will be random and the results will be announced by March 11.
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