For middle-income families who want to live in Howard County, the four new detached homes sitting in a row in Elkridge offer discount prices and guaranteed financing. But they lack one thing - qualified buyers.
The 1,728-square-foot, three-bedroom homes on Cherry Avenue near the Anne Arundel County border are newly finished - three by the nonprofit Columbia Housing Corp. and one by Habitat for Humanity, the church-backed affordable-home builder.
Although several families are working with the groups to qualify as buyers of three of the residences, no sales are complete, even though the project broke ground nearly a year ago.
"I think it's just hard to get the message out there," said Grace A. Morris, executive director of Columbia Housing, a 41-year-old group that operates hundreds of units of subsidized rental housing, mostly in Columbia.
"It's really hard to get people qualified," Morris said, adding that credit issues have been the main culprit.
Morris spoke as about 40 people gathered in one of the homes early Tuesday for a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the homes' completion and draw public attention to attract more applicants The crowd included representatives from both of the nonprofit groups and county officials.
The national credit crunch is not helping, said Tim Sosinski, a CHC board member who is chairman of the group's development committee. Even at the discount price, a large detached home is difficult for many families to afford in Howard, where the average sale price for all homes is about $430,000.
The Elkridge units come with two finished levels and a large unfinished walk-out basement. Each has a roomy eat-in kitchen, a half-bath and an open living-dining room area that covers half of the first floor, with a sliding-glass door overlooking a grassy backyard. Upstairs there are three bedrooms with large closets and two full bathrooms and a washer and dryer. Each home has a driveway and a covered front porch. The street is a private drive, so residents will have to take their trash to the corner for collection and arrange their own snow removal.
The county government used federal housing funds to pay for extending underground utilities to the site and to help CHC buyers with down payments.
"This is really a true partnership between the private sector, government and nonprofits," said Stacy L. Spann, the county's housing director.
