photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Tenants to Homeowners has filed plans to renovate an existing home at 1718 Harper Street and build six other smaller homes on the vacant land surrounding the house.

A bigger home is a better home. That is a notion that has won the day many times in Lawrence, but it’s not doing much to help the community win its battle for affordable housing, Rebecca Buford, executive director of Tenants to Homeowners, said.

“Some of what has to happen here is a change in mindset,” Buford said.

Indeed, Buford’s Lawrence-based nonprofit has filed plans at City Hall for a new affordable housing development in eastern Lawrence that intends to add about a half-dozen new homes to the market but also change some minds about smaller homes.

The project is slated for one large parcel at 1718 Harper Street that currently has one small house on it. When the project is completed, it is expected to have seven small houses on it, which is nearly twice as many as would be built in a traditional Lawrence neighborhood.

Buford is estimating the houses will be between 500 and 1,000 square feet, which is about a third of the size of many traditional homes that are built today.

None of the houses will be duplexes, none of them will be rentals, and they also won’t be what you might think of as “tiny homes,” the sometimes ridiculously small structures that have become the rage on HGTV.

“They certainly aren’t going to be for a giant family, but the majority of people who are struggling to find affordable housing are one- or two-person households,” Buford said.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The property at 1718 Harper Street in eastern Lawrence is planned for a new affordable housing project by Tenants to Homeowners.

The houses will be a mix of one- and two-bedroom homes, likely with carports, instead of garages, to help with affordability. The interiors are expected to have a heavy emphasis on multipurpose spaces and even multipurpose furniture, Buford said. What might that mean? A Murphy bed — the kind that folds into a wall — is an example. A dining room table that easily collapses into a much smaller table is another.

“The Europeans have done a lot of this for years,” Buford said.

Touting that something is European, though, hasn’t been a sure-fire way of winning support for an idea in America. There are signs — literal signs — that this new type of neighborhood has some opponents.

In eastern Lawrence, neighborhoods are dotted with yard signs that oppose the idea of “double density.” That’s the phrase used to describe a provision of Lawrence’s development code that Tenants to Homeowners hopes to use to build seven small homes on four single-family lots. One of the four lots has an existing home in the center of the lot, so a smaller home won’t be built on that lot.

The other three lots, though, are basically just part of a large yard. A relatively new provision in city code allows for two dwelling units to be built on a single lot, if certain provisions are met. When conceived a couple of years ago, the code provision was envisioned as a way for a small home — or a mother-in-law suite, as some might call it — to be built next to an existing home. But the code also allows for two new homes to be built on a lot, if the units are placed into an affordable housing program.

All the houses in the Harper Street development will be part of the Lawrence Community Housing Trust, which Buford’s organization administers. The Housing Trust sells homes to eligible buyers, with a goal of selling each home for about $50,000 below market value. In exchange for the below-market price they are paying, each homeowner commits to a contract that obligates them — when they decide to move — to sell the home through the Housing Trust.

A key provision of the deal is that homeowners agree they only will seek to to recoup 25% of any appreciation in value that has occurred. For example, if rising real estate values increased the price of the home by $100,000 since the owner purchased the property, the owner would agree to sell the home for no more than the original purchase price plus $25,000. The idea is that the home would remain affordable for somebody else who qualifies to purchase through the Housing Trust program.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Two smaller homes at the corner of 15th Street and Prairie Avenue in eastern Lawrence are examples of how Tenants to Homeowners tries to build new houses that are more affordable than larger, traditional homes.

Tenants to Homeowners has used the Housing Trust to sell more than 80 homes across the community in recent years. But the double density provision, which was drafted in the city’s code in 2019, hasn’t been used much. The project on Harper Street would be its largest use yet in Lawrence.

But Buford said Tenants to Homeowners does have some examples of the smaller types of homes it envisions for the Harper Street development, which hasn’t yet gone through a full design because it is still seeking city zoning approval. The northwest corner of 15th Street and Prairie Avenue has three smaller homes that Tenants to Homeowners built.

“I haven’t heard one complaint since those were built,” Buford said.

Thus far, the homes also are producing the desired impact on affordability. Buford said one of the homes, thanks to usage of solar panels, has a combined monthly mortgage payment and utility bill that is $200 a month less than the median two-bedroom apartment rental rate in Lawrence.

Buford is hoping that the new homes in the Harper Street development will go on the market for $120,000 to $160,000. That’s more than she ever thought at one point in time, but she said the rapidly increasing prices of lumber and other construction materials, along with a strong desire to make every home highly energy efficient, are making it difficult to keep building costs in check.

Still, the $120,000 to $160,000 price tag compares favorably to median selling prices in Lawrence. Thus far in 2022, median selling prices in Lawrence have been nearly $275,000, according to data from the Lawrence Board of Realtors.

Granted, most homes that are selling in Lawrence are much bigger than what’s planned for the Harper Street project. But Buford said convincing homeowners that a smaller home is a benefit and not a detriment is part of what the new development intends to do.

“If people can get past the idea of not needing a lot of extra space, they realize they can afford to own a home,” she said.

Buford is betting that the idea that bigger isn’t always better will catch on. She knows there are some owners who will enjoy it in the coming days as the temperatures rise and so many Lawrence residents are talking about how the grass won’t quit growing.

Buford said owners of smaller homes may have something different to say: “They can say ‘I can go enjoy the park because I don’t have a big backyard to mow.'”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Two smaller homes at the corner of 15th Street and Prairie Avenue in eastern Lawrence are examples of how Tenants to Homeowners tries to build new houses that are more affordable than larger, traditional homes.