PORT ANGELES — A Port-Angeles-based nonprofit that buys and restores homes to make them available at reduced cost to low-income families will host a tour of its most recent project in Port Angeles today.

After more than six months of renovation, Homeward Bound Community Land Trust has announced the completion of its fifth home in Clallam County and the first completed under a program where the future owners do work on the house themselves, land trust Program Director Melinda Szatlocky said Thursday.

To show off the 2,400-square-foot four-bedroom, two-bathroom rehabilitated home at 1138 W. Eighth St., the land trust is hosting today’s open house from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Also available will be information about how the land trust works and how other families can get involved in its projects.

The first family to own the renovated home is a single working mother with three children, Szatlocky said.

The woman’s grandmother, uncles and co-workers also chipped in on the renovation.

The new owner had to put at least 100 hours of labor into the home herself, something Szatlocky said the woman and her extended family accomplished in spades.

“It turned out to be a lot more sweat equity then they thought,” Szatlocky said.

The land trust purchased the home in March of this year and since the beginning of summer has renovated the 80-year-old structure’s wiring, plumbing, cabinets, bathrooms, drywall and flooring.

“We thought this job was going to take us three months,” Szatlocky said. “It took six.”

Szatlocky said contract crews and volunteers worked evenings during the summer and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. most weekends and holidays to renovate the home.

The land trust received much of the material and some of the labor at low or no cost from area contractors and suppliers, Szatlocky said.

Water damage

The home itself was structurally sound but had to be taken down to the studs in most areas because of water damage to the walls, Szatlocky explained.

The electrical and plumbing systems all had to be replaced, in addition to most of the floorboards, she said.

“We had to replace a lot of the floor up here because it was damaged,” Szatlocky said, referring to the second story.

“But now you can dance on it.”

The Eight Street house is the fifth in Port Angeles that the land trust has helped renovate and sold to working, first-time homebuyers earning less than 80 percent of the Clallam County median income, Szatlocky said.

Started in 2005

The land trust, started in 2005, works out agreements attached to the property of these homes that make sure they will only be sold later on to similar low-income homebuyers and families, she explained.

“The whole idea behind the land trust is if we put all this time and money into [a home] as a community, then it stays affordable forever,” Szatlocky said.

Szatlocky said the land trust has about 15 families on a waiting list for future homes bought by the nonprofit.

“If we had a house that they were eligible for and the financing worked, [one of them] would jump in,” she said.

For more information on the Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, visit its website at http://bit.ly/R4bY5W.

________

Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.