Habitat for Humanity will spend $5 million to build the Pleasant Hill affordable housing complex, but they bought the property for just ten bucks.
If you were inspired by this weekend’s story of 95-year-old former president Jimmy Carter falling down and getting a huge black eye, then showing up to build Habitat for Humanity houses the very next day, well, you’re going to need a bigger box of Kleenex. The house-building nonprofit has scored another uplifting and creative win that will make a little dent in the Bay Area housing crisis, as Bay City News reports that Habitat for Humanity spent a mere ten dollars to buy a vacant lot in Pleasant Hill, and will build seven townhouses for affordable housing.
Granted, it’s just one-eighth of an acre, seen above, located a little more than a mile from De La Salle High School. So it’s not some sprawling, huge property. But in a city where median household income is more than $100,000 and property averages $431 per square foot, you have to love seeing a sweetheart deal handed out to a genuinely altruistic cause.
The land had been owned by the Pleasant Hill Redevelopment Successor Agency, and there were two other offers on the table from market-rate developers. One of those offers was a reported $250,000. But the city of Pleasant Hill had incentives to sell to Habitat for Humanity for essentially nothing.
“Any money that we would have seen from selling the property would have gone back to [Contra Costa] County,” city spokesperson Gayle Vassar told Bay City News.
So Habitat gets nearly 6,000 square feet of real estate for the price of a last-minute “Hamilton” lottery ticket. The seven-townhouse complex itself is expected to cost $5 million, though paperwork requirements will probably prevent Habitat for Humanity from breaking ground on the project anytime in 2019.
Related: Habitat For Humanity Crew Robbed At Gunpoint [SFist]
Image: Google Street View