Come view an affordable home in Oak Ridge for first-time buyers

The Oak Ridge Community Development Corp. (ORCDC) will host a ribbon cutting and open house to showcase three homes built to offer affordable home ownership to first-time homebuyers who are part of the community workforce.

The ribbon cutting will be at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, June 22, at 106 Waddell Place, in front of the three new homes in the Highland View neighborhood. The event will also showcase how nonprofits and community partners came together to enable the Oak Ridge Housing Authority and ORCDC to build affordable housing for new homeowners for the first time in Oak Ridge.

“Our intent was to design a quality home that is not only architecturally pleasing and energy saving, but also affordable for first-time homebuyers in the Oak Ridge community,” said Maria Catron, executive director of the Oak Ridge Housing Authority.

“This is just the beginning of opportunities for the Community Development Corporation, along with the Oak Ridge Housing Authority, to provide quality affordable housing to the residents of Oak Ridge,” Tom Beehan, ORCDC chairman said.

The one-level homes have similar floor plans, with three bedrooms, two baths, and wide front porches. The exteriors each have a different historic paint color with unique style touches.

Each home is offered for its appraised value, $238,000. Catron noted that the affordable price point a few years ago, as this project was being conceived, was $150,000 to $180,000. Today, it’s $200,000 to the low $200,000s.

The house at 106 Waddell Place will be open for viewing for three days, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, June 22-24.

Interior designer Judy Gooch has fully staged the house, volunteering her time to decorate and be at the home while it’s open. She plans to donate window treatments used in staging to the family that purchases the house. Gooch invited Bill Cox Furniture of Knoxville to furnish the rooms for the open house. Furnishings will be available for sale when the open house ends on Saturday.

“Judy has really stepped up to showcase this project to our community, so we can really see what affordable housing can be. It can be done beautifully and tastefully, with all the appeal we would like to see in our homes,” Catron said.

“This is a wonderful first step on what a community partnership looks like and what it can accomplish,” Catron said. “This has truly been a group effort the Oak Ridge Land Bank, the city of Oak Ridge, other nonprofit housing providers, Pinnacle Bank, and the Tennessee Housing Development Agency (THDA), along with volunteers and potential homeowners we have been working with.”

She added, “This is how to make a meaningful impact, not only for our families who want to purchase a home, but for the community as a whole.”

Anyone who hasn’t purchased a home before or hasn’t owned a home in the past three years, with a gross income at 80% of the average median income for this area is eligible to purchase the homes, Catron said. For a family of four, that household income would be $69,100.

Those interested should contact the Oak Ridge Housing Authority, 865-482-1006, to see if they qualify and to learn about loan programs that support the purchase. After the three-day open house, the houses will be available to see by appointment with the Housing Authority.

While the Housing Authority manages public housing units, the nonprofit Oak Ridge Community Development Corp. was formed five years ago by the Housing Authority to manage developments such as the new homes on Waddell Place.

The project began when the Oak Ridge Land Bank gave ORCDC four lots on Waddell Place. Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties (ADFAC) will build an affordable home on the fourth lot.

Partnership support came from THDA, which enabled use of the Community Investment Tax Credit (CITC) by the construction lender, Pinnacle Bank. The bank receives a credit on its state sales and excise taxes in exchange for providing loan products to nonprofits for developing affordable housing opportunities, Catron explained.

“So hats off to Pinnacle Bank for agreeing to use the CITC program. The bank has been a great partner to work with. With THDA support, we’ve been able to keep the cost low, which means we have affordable homes to put on the market,” she said.

The Architecture Collaborative of Knoxville designed the homes, looking at the architectural history of homes in Oak Ridge. S&J Design and Construction LLC, Knoxville, was the general contractor.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Groups work together to construct three affordable Oak Ridge homes