EDITORIAL: The one-dollar clue to affordable housing

Affordable housing is the Holy Grail of American society. It is a treasure sought after by leaders of great cities and rural villages, the subject of longing by young couples raising families and retirees seeking a nice place to live that doesn’t exhaust their hard-earned retirement savings and vast numbers of folks who simply want to experience what was once called the American dream—owning their own home.  

That treasure has been as impossible to find in recent generations as that storied and perhaps mythical religious artifact. But now there is a clue that it may actually exist. The clue was found in an old Saukville school.

The reason the search has been so difficult is simple—it’s the inflated cost of building. At today’s average minimum construction cost of around $240 a square foot, even houses considered small by contemporary standards can require an investment of more than a half million dollars.

The cost of existing homes has naturally risen apace. The median price of the 398 homes listed for sale in Ozaukee County in January was $603,000. That inventory of existing houses includes older dwellings once considered “starter homes” that today are priced beyond the means of many people hoping to get their start in home ownership.

What does the 70-year-old Saukville Elementary School have to do with this? If an innovative plan works out, it will provide 16 new affordable homes and a template for recycling discarded buildings into affordable housing.

The building on North Mill Street will end its life as a school when the bell rings for the last time in June 2027. It will be replaced by the new school now under construction on Orchard Lane near the Village of Saukville’s western edge. 

The Port Washington-Saukville School District was facing the likelihood that it would be left with a large abandoned building in the Milwaukee River floodplain that would have to be razed in order to sell the land it occupies. But now it has found a way out of that expensive situation.

The School Board voted last week to sell the property for $1. Don’t be misled by the giveaway price. It’s a good deal for school-district taxpayers. 

The school building has been listed for sale for months without any sign of a potential buyer and it was looking like the district would have no alternative but to tear it down at breathtaking expense.

The referendum approved by voters to pay for the new Saukville school included $650,000 for disposing of the old building, but the board was warned the cost could reach $1 million.

When the one-dollar deal with Goldfinger Properties of Grafton is signed, that taxpayer money will be saved. For their part, Goldfinger owners Joe and Karen Locher plan to use the advantage of the favorable purchase “price” to make the condos that will be created in the building qualify as affordable housing.

The repurposed building will be turned into 16 condo homes of various sizes, with some priced as low as $175,000, according to the developers, and 11 of the units going for less than $325,000. 

The Lochers demonstrated the value of recycling non-residential buildings when they successfully converted a Grafton foundry into commercial condos.

With the Saukville school, Joe Locher said, “it struck us, wait a minute, let’s see if there’s a way to at least use what’s standing and short-circuit that evil formula that makes housing unaffordable.” 

People who are able to find homes through initiatives such as the school-recycling project are not the only beneficiaries of affordable housing. Cities, villages and towns are better off when available housing attracts new residents of all economic means to add their vitality to community living.

In the case of Saukville and the Port Washington-Saukville School District, repurposing of the school as condos will add families to the population to fill local jobs and increase school enrollment (and thus qualify for higher state funding) while adding taxable valuation where there was none before.

Meanwhile, the school-to-condos plan will serve as a promising model for one way to find success in the search for the treasure of affordable housing.