Year established as a nonprofit: 2021
What does your organization do for Ouray County?
In a county where the median cost of a single family home is $875,000, our work is critical to the future of our community and maintaining it as a place where our workforce, young families and retirees can afford to live here.
The Home Trust develops home ownership opportunities while primarily focusing on closing the gap of affordable rental opportunities in Ouray County. Currently we have about 30 rental units planned for development, in addition to our duplex homeownership project. However, we also look beyond housing needs, incorporating childcare and affordable commercial space to grow an inclusive, economically diverse community.
Our mission is to provide permanently affordable housing and housing-related resources to those living in Ouray County through the stewardship of community assets. We do this as a community land trust using a model that maintains affordability and stewards the land by continuing to own the land through a ground lease. In this way, investments in our housing remain invested as a community asset in perpetuity.
The Home Trust is the first community land trust on the Western Slope and prides itself in applying this grassroots, community-focused model towards fortifying our community’s future.
What do you list as your greatest accomplishments in 2023?
Purchasing and preserving an existing six-plex in Ouray for affordable rentals, as well as breaking ground on our duplex home ownership project and making progress on our rental projects.
What are some goals or projects you have planned for 2024?
Our 2024 goals include building our duplex project in Ridgway, getting eligible homebuyers into affordable housing and completing conceptual plans and architect selection for our rental/childcare/ commercial space property in Ridgway.
We also want to complete renovations of our six-plex property in Ouray, grow our fundraising events (Ourayce and the Home Tour), break ground on a 13-unit rental project in Ouray, and fulfill our goal of purchasing one property per year to preserve affordable local rentals.
We also want to focus on growing our member and donor base as our project’s timelines are dependent upon funding.
Tell us how the community can help you do more here in Ouray County.
(Examples: Give specific volunteer opportunities, fundraising goals for specific projects or programs, etc.)
We depend upon community support for donations, volunteers and event sponsorship. Home Trust membership is a great way to stay plugged in to our progress and is only $25 per year but most importantly, we need funding support.
The majority of our funding comes from grants and state and local government support. These funds are restricted to our projects and, although we have covered 54% of our operating costs through grant funding and fundraising activities, we need additional community donations to cover operational costs of our rapid project and program growth. You can learn more at hometrustoc.org.
Thank you to Kelly Goodin for providing this information.
