Members of the community and the Watonga Foundation met late last month with representatives from the Fuller Center for Housing of Fort Smith, an organization that was begun by Millard and Linda Fuller, the cofounders of Habitat for Humanity.
The center leaders were in town to discuss how this town can move forward in providing housing for those who are in need of housing change. Those groups include the elderly, economically disadvantaged and renters.
“We don’t get companies moving to Watonga because there isn’t enough housing in Watonga,” said Tina Willis, a member of the Watonga Foundation who is also on the city council. It was pointed out that many of the employees of Mountain Country Foods, a pet food factory in Okeene commute from Watonga, Fairview or even Enid because of the lack of housing.
Charles Adams was one of the reps sent by the Fuller Center. He said he had noticed a lot of dilapidated buildings in town and knew there was always the question of whether they should be rehabilitated or new housing built. “Whether to build new or rehab is up to those involved,” he said. “But with mortgage rates going up the days of building new affordable housing for low-income families are gone. We have to build smaller houses for smaller needs.”
The model of smaller houses for elders who want to downsize but remain in their community has been espoused around the country, according to David Burrell, also of the Fuller Center. The center calls the housing model cottages, and they are constructed most often with a ‘missing middle’ design. Essentially, the front of the homes face a street, with the backs opening on a shared communal space. This allows the residents to build a sense of community because they are interacting with each other regularly.
And although the cottages aren’t designed to accommodate growing families, they do help alleviate housing shortages in another way. When elders move into the cottages, their former, larger homes usually go on the market and are available to families.
The Fuller Center creates partnerships with other organizations to build affordable homes for people who can’t obtain those homes in conventional ways. The partnerships work to build and repair homes and work with volunteers to help build homes for recipients who also work on their own and others’ home builds. The houses are then sold to them at terms they can afford.
A second program that has been very successful is the Greater Blessing Program where houses are repaired and the owners promise to repay the loan. They decide the monthly payments and length of repayment. They sign no mortgage agreement and there is no legal obligation to repay.
Montie Stewart, a developer who is part of the Watonga Foundation, indicated he was interested in following the cottage concept for elders.
Andy Barrett, who is also a foundation member recounted having to send his own father to Tulsa to live with family because there was nowhere for him to stay locally once he left his rural home. While that worked out, it would have been much better, Barrett said, if his father had been able to remain in the town he loved around his friends and his family here.
Beyond that, Barrett said, it would help the hospital as well as the town because there would be a larger patient and tax base, rather than having those people move to other towns where the benefits of their residency is reaped by those communities instead of Watonga.
The Fuller Center makes its cottage blueprints available at no charge and is a resource for communities and organizations searching for resources to implement changes to the existing housing infrastructure.
Recently, the City of Watonga was gifted two lots on Weigle Avenue to be used for a house build. The hopes are for funding to be obtained through the Northwest Oklahoma Development Authority, then the house to be sold at a reasonable price to a family. That money would then be used to fund a second build, getting the housing ball rolling in the community. There has been no word on that funding request, since the lots were gifted in October.