Tandem homes offer affordable homeownership in Denver's Globeville neighborhood

In Denver's Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods, tandem homes are offering a path to affordable homeownership while helping prevent the displacement of longtime residents.

The homes, built in partnership with the Globeville-Elyria-Swansea Coalition, Tierra Colectiva Land Trust, Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver, and the West Denver Renaissance Collaborative, were unveiled last week.

Housing advocates say the tandem home model could be a key piece of solving Denver's affordable housing crisis.

"A tandem home is an additional home that's separate, not attached, and it's added to a single-family home lot," explained Nola Miguel, Executive Director of the GES Coalition and Tierra Colectiva Community Land Trust. "An ADU, or accessory dwelling unit, is owned by the same family. A tandem home is separate ownership. So the lot is split into two different ownerships."

By using small, efficient designs typically used for ADUs, the new tandem homes offer a unique and cost-effective model for infill development.

Miguel says that the tandem homes are about more than affordability - they are about keeping families rooted in the homes they know.

"It allows people to stay in Denver, in the neighborhoods that they love, like Globeville that we're in now, and stay close to their jobs, stay close to their families, and have easy transportation. Stay in the schools where their kids have been going," she said.

Displacement has been a major issue in these neighborhoods.

"In Globeville and Elyria-Swansea, which is where my organization focuses, we have had a huge amount of displacement. In 2017, we did a survey that said nine out of ten neighbors are at risk of displacement," Miguel said.

For many first-time buyers, homeownership in Denver has felt impossible. However, these tandem homes are being sold affordably thanks to the community land trust model.

"We sell our homes at 57% of the area median income," Miguel said. "For this home, it's a three-bedroom, one-bath home. We're selling for $215,000."

Miguel explained that the savings come from multiple sources.

"Partially just by having the tandem home structure, we're able to save money on the land price. Also, by keeping the home in a community land trust, we get subsidies from the city and the state to help reduce the price," she said.

Construction efficiencies also played a major role.

"This type of model is actually very simple to build. It's just one story. Habitat for Humanity, the developer of this property, has a panel construction and they bring in panels at a time, and they use volunteer teams to build it, and that makes the build really affordable as well," Miguel said. "They said it only took them about 12 days, actually, to build the structure."

Families interested in these homes go through a careful selection process. "They come to an orientation and learn about how a community land trust works. Then they get pre-qualified for a loan and do a first-time homebuyers' CHFA-certified class," Miguel said.

The family planning to buy the new home is currently living in an apartment with mold problems just blocks away.

Alfonso Espino Reyna, an area native, knows firsthand how important these efforts are. He grew up minutes from the new homes and credits a land trust home he purchased a few years ago with keeping him rooted in GES.

"My family, first and foremost, kept me here," Reyna said. "I don't really want to go anywhere else in Denver or beyond like a lot of people have to. But I couldn't afford to stay if it wasn't for the land trust."

Reyna said the city's usual affordable housing offerings aren't truly affordable for working families.

"In the city, they talk about affordable housing... but for who?" he said. "I know people in affordable housing apartment complexes that pay $3,000 a month."

He said keeping families together strengthens the community. "When you're in a moment of crisis, when you're down on your luck, when you need somebody to lean on… It's kind of hard to do that when you're isolated in some random town you had to move to away from everybody."

Thanks to the land trust model, the homes will remain affordable for future generations. The homeowners can resell at any time, but the resale value is restricted. The community land trust repurchases the home and resells it to another qualified family so it stays affordable in perpetuity.

Miguel believes that policies could be improved to make these kinds of affordable housing solutions easier to build.

"We'd love for affordable developers like ourselves and Habitat for Humanity to be able to add an ADU or tandem home by right, without having to rezone the property," Miguel said. "It takes about six months, resources, and time. If we could just build it without having to rezone, we could streamline affordable housing faster."