Affordable Housing for First-Time Owners
Written by Tim Buckley, August 2025
It must be like getting the call that you’ve won the lottery! Instead of cash, the winners in this case heard that the subsidized house they’ve been renting for years is now for sale, and the current renters are being given the first option to buy it.
Imagine thinking: “How in the world can we afford to buy something that has been difficult to make rent on?” But, the Salem Housing Authority, who currently owns the homes, is greatly incentivized to get rid of the homes and so they are sweetening the deal by lowering the costs to acquire the mortgage. The icing on that particular lotto cake is that a large portion of the low interest loan is forgivable if the new owners stays in their homes for 30 years!
The 79 homes are scattered throughout Salem and Keizer. The Salem Housing Authority bought the properties years ago, during a time when the federal government (Housing and Uran Development, or HUD) provided funding to buy properties that would be rented affordably to low-income families. In recent years, HUD funding, both for subsidized housing and for upkeep of the acquired properties, has dwindled. The housing authority can no longer afford the staff and the maintenance budget to keep those properties in good condition. So, in letting the current renters buy the homes, it provides a win-win for Salem and Keizer. The housing authority reduces its financial burden and the renters of those properties get a chance at becoming first time homeowners.
The housing authority board, made up of the Salem City Council, decided in July to put the homes up for sale at below market rate. The first 33 of the homes will be sold to Habitat for Humanity, which plans to renovate them and then sell them to the current renters if they choose to. Families will qualify if the reduced mortgage is no more than 30 percent of their household income.
Some of the properties, on larger lots, will be torn down and a more efficient cluster of homes will be built on the same lot. No one will be forced out before they have an alternate place to move. People living in those homes will be compensated so that they can buy or rent at a comparable place elsewhere.
Jessica Blakely, Salem Housing Authority
The housing authority owns the properties debt-free, but they’re prevented by law from giving them away. “We don’t make money off all of these homes,” said Jessica Blakely, the housing authority’s lead strategist. “Any money we do make is going to go back into affordable development for any type of affordable multifamily building that we want to build. It’s all a bonus,” she said.
CBEL has been a collaborative partner with the housing authority and a range of other organizations, including financial institutions, working on a variety of ideas for providing more opportunities for Salem and Keizer residents to become first time homeowners. Along the way, Neighborhood Family Councils have offered classes in financial management as a way of helping to prequalify them for home ownership.
So, it appears that some of the homes are in existing CBEL neighborhoods, and if the current renters choose not to buy them, qualifying neighborhood residents and veterans will be given the option to buy.
“Home ownership has been part of the American dream since the country’s founding,” said Jim Seymour, CBEL’s Director. “Helping families to realize that dream builds financial security in the family and the neighborhood. Families build equity in their home which they can pass on to their children. The net effect of increased home ownership is a reduction in population mobility, which improves public safety and the quality of public schools.”
Click here to read the Salem Reporter article about the Scattered Sites Project