EVERETT — It looks like any other neighborhood, but beneath the siding of each home in Kokanee Creek lies what some call the secret to affordable housing.
The neighborhood really is made up of manufactured houses stacked on top of each other like Lego blocks.
“It’s weird to tell people that they put them on top of each other like building blocks,” said Jennifer Eichmeier, president of the homeowners association.
The townhouse project, built in 2004, remains unique in Snohomish County. Now it’s attracting attention as a possible model for affordable housing.
“I never would have thought this was built in a factory,” County Councilman Brian Sullivan said during a tour of Kokanee Creek.
Sullivan asked for the tour as he and others look for ways to build more affordable housing in Snohomish County — especially as young families struggle to afford a place of their own and seniors worry whether their mobile home park might be next for redevelopment.
By stacking manufactured houses, it makes use of the last pockets of unused land in urban areas, industry officials say.
Unlike the majority of houses built board-by-board in Snohomish County, Kokanee Creek houses were built in a factory in Oregon. Everything is included — wiring, plumbing, appliances, even the window blinds.
The houses were trucked up I-5 and swung onto permanent foundations with a crane in 2004. They’re north of Lake Stickney near where Admiralty Way and Airport Road meet.
The cost per unit was about $70,000, plus costs for land, concrete foundation and crane work. Families paid $180,000 and up for duplexes, and up to $250,000 for homes stacked into single-family houses in the neighborhood.
Kokanee Creek includes 35 houses, mostly filled with young families trying to get their start.
The Ryans were raising two daughters in a Lynnwood apartment when they found out about Kokanee Creek.
“It’s a good first home,” said Darbi Ryan, 25. “We’d probably still be in an apartment or renting. It’s nice to finally have money go toward a mortgage.”
Now they have added a young son to the family, and the neighborhood that already was packed with kids continues to grow.
Kokanee Creek was sold as detached condominiums. The project cost $7 million and was built by Seattle-based Homesight on land owned by the Housing Authority of Snohomish County. The land was first bought in 1992 and sat idle for years.
The project is one of three stacked manufactured housing projects in the Puget Sound area. The others are Noji Gardens in Seattle and triplex housing at Fort Lewis.
Despite making headlines for their innovations, the projects didn’t spur similar development.
That’s frustrating, housing authority executive director Bob Davis said.
“It doesn’t seem to catch on to the extent I expect it to when it gets visibility,” Davis said.
There is more interest now, Davis said. Trying to help seniors evicted from mobile home parks is motivating people to consider manufactured housing.
“It’s always a good time to look at manufactured housing as a product to be used for affordable housing developments,” Davis said. “You can build a manufactured product as good as a site-built product.”
Some people still see manufactured homes as metal-wrapped trailers, said Joan Brown, executive director of the Northwest Housing Association.
That stigma has eased over the years, Brown said. The key milestone came in 2005 when the state Legislature said cities couldn’t keep manufactured homes out of single-family neighborhoods.
Government can help drive the market with tax incentives, zoning, land and partnerships, Sullivan said.
“Zoning powers have a tremendous ability to push the market along for certain types of housing,” Sullivan said. “It’s something I’m interested in looking at.”
Stacked manufactured homes also could become standard for future housing projects on vacant pockets of land in and around cities, Brown said. Typical builders often avoid these properties because there’s little room for big equipment and construction materials— but a crane can move in to set a home in place, she said.
Another experiment in factory-built housing is under way in downtown Seattle. Unico Properties LLC has proposed building 66 modular apartments — housing cubes stacked four stories tall. Units will measure between 450 square feet for studios and 1,300 square feet for lofts, said Dale Sperling, Unico president and CEO.
The construction quality of factory-built homes is comparable to homes built on-site, while costs are 15 percent lower, said Tony To, executive director of Homesight, the group that built Kokanee Creek.
“The reasons why we did the project are still there,” To said. “It’s more cost effective to do manufactured housing. Essentially they are Legos stacked one on top of the other and we connect them.”
Developers haven’t shown much interest in using manufactured housing, said Brown of the Northwest Housing Association.
It’s true, said Mike Pattison of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.
“Builders build houses, they don’t buy houses from a factory,” Pattison said.
That could change. Developers might sit up and pay more attention if officials are interested in zoning rules that open the door to allow more manufactured housing.
“Maybe there does need to be some education,” Pattison said.
Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
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