Home Sweet Home

One of the many wonderful nonprofit organizations we love and support in Bellingham is the Kulshan Community Land Trust (KulshanCLT for short), which partners with families of modest means to bridge the gap between the cost of a home and what the potential homeowners can afford, and also offers financial education and other services to income-eligible homebuyers.

The homebuyers build equity and enjoy the stability of owning their own home, while those homes, held in trust, are kept permanently affordable and are not as vulnerable to the fluctuations of the real estate market.

Our friend J is the KulshanCLT development director, and we help her out by taking photos at several events annually. Today was a special occasion -- the dedication of KulshanCLT's 100th home, a joint project of the land trust and The Cascade Joinery -- whose work you've seen in the links here -- in cooperation with the City of Bellingham and the State of Washington. It's a modest-sized (1,100 square feet / 102 square meters), super-efficient home with solar panels on the roof, energy-efficient utilities and appliances, and much more.

The family receiving the key to their new home today, presented by LH (left), representing KulshanCLT members and supporters, are friends of ours. I see JK monthly for massage therapy, MK is a manager at our local food co-op, and their son, M, is a delight. We're thrilled for them to have a brand-new, energy-efficient home, and know they will make good use of all its features.

Their new home is on a dead-end street, and taking a walk of less than five minutes, this is what they'll see on a clear day like today -- the Twin Sisters range of the Cascade Mountains, just over 20 miles from Bellingham Bay, and Mount Baker (visible in the link), a 10,781 foot (3,286 meter) active volcano. Their new neighborhood will be a great place for M to grow up!

(Addendum: I took the Twin Sisters photo with my little camera's full zoom to 300mm equivalent, and cropped in on the mountains as well. Our friends' new home has a view of other houses on their quiet, dead-end street, but as noted above, they can see these snow-covered mountains by taking a walk of only a few minutes.)

(You can see Phil's blip of this event here.)