courtesy Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation
Chances are, Luke Skywalker couldn’t afford to live in Marin County, outside of San Francisco. After all, moisture farming didn’t pay that much in the Galactic Empire.
Maybe that’s one reason that filmmaker George Lucas, like a few celebrities before him, is now championing a not-so-sexy, but super important, cause. Never mind the environment or puppy mills: Stars are now taking on affordable housing—and you might be surprised by what “affordable” means.
Actor Brad Pitt likely paved the way with Make It Right, a nonprofit that builds (beautiful) low-income homes in New Orleans; Newark, NJ; Kansas City, MO; and Fort Peck, MT. It was soon followed by the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which started its affordable housing program in the precrash heyday and has built hundreds of homes for low-income and special-needs residents from Rockdale County, GA, to Detroit. (A Soul Foundation apartment building in Philadelphia is pictured above.) The singer Jewel (who famously lived in her car for a stint) has signed on to the no-profit ReThink, to change the public’s perception of public housing.
Lucas’ entry into the cause wasn’t exactly deliberate, though. When he bought a 1,000-acre ranch in Marin County, his plan was to turn it into a production studio. When nearby residents protested too much—the traffic! the molested views!—the plan eventually shifted. Instead, Lucas would develop the land into affordable housing. Not only that, but Lucas’ company would foot much of the $150 million bill.
In April, his company submitted plans to the county for a 224-unit complex on 52 acres, north of San Rafael. Grady Ranch will include 120 two- and three-bedroom residences, reserved for “workforce” dwellers (teachers and nurses, for instance) and 104 one- and two-bedroom units for seniors, plus a pool, an orchard and small farm, a community center, and a bus stop. (One site referred to the project as “Housing Episode VI: A New Hope.”)
Why would residents protest a movie studio but not affordable housing? Well, many did, but their eventual acceptance of the project is partly a lesson in semantics. This is affordable rather than low-income housing, and “affordable” is a relative term.
Marin is one of the nation’s wealthiest areas, with a very low percentage of people living below the poverty line. Some of the Grady Ranch homes will be earmarked for people making 80% of the area median income. In Marin, for one person that’s $72,100; for a family of four, it’s $103,000. Housing like this is designed to keep middle-class people from leaving an area where the average home price is $989,000.
According to the project’s website, “It will create housing for the people who need it most, including our local teachers, nurses, police officers, and other essential community members who cannot afford to live in the community they serve.”
But green-lighting affordable housing appears to be much harder than green-lighting a movie. In June, developing partner Marin Community Foundation bailed out of the project, fearing “uncertainties of obtaining the necessary state and federal financing,” according to a joint statement by the foundation and Skywalker Properties. Celebrities may be getting hipper to the cause all the time, but developments of all-affordable housing are getting harder to fund.
Lucas was reportedly very Jedi-like about the break—those were not the developers he was looking for, apparently—and his company is intent on finding a new partner to, um, join the force. After all, this is a guy who is used to setbacks, detractors, and funding troubles (he could afford to shoot only a few scenes of the original “Star Wars” at a time).
And while he probably doesn’t view his neighbors as the Evil Empire (being pretty solidly one of the 1% at this point), he clearly still has a soft spot for the little guy.
As Lucas told one website, “We’ve got enough millionaires here. What we need is some houses for regular working people.”
The post Move Over, Orphan Puppies—Celebrities Are Now Championing Affordable Housing appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com.