Donated Land Makes A `Wonderful’ Site For Valley Habitat Home Garden May Become Low-Income Housing Location

A 93-year-old Spokane Valley woman is offering to give up her garden so that someone else can have a home.

Thanks to the woman’s gift of a quarter acre of property and donations and pledges of financial support from members of Spokane Valley Baptist Church, Habitat for Humanity is making plans to build its first house in the Valley.

“This is our first opportunity to build in the Valley,” said Dia Hadley, Habitat for Humanity executive director. “The Valley is an expensive area to live in, and land there is less available.”

The woman who is offering to donate the building site to Habitat wishes to remain anonymous, Hadley said. She is a longtime member of Valley Baptist, which is spearheading the effort to build a Habitat house in the Valley.

Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization that builds houses for low-income families, is seeking permission from the county to subdivide the half-acre lot the woman owns near Ninth and University.

“It’s just wonderful property,” Hadley said. “It’s a prime spot - nothing Habitat could ever afford.”

The quarter-acre building site is assessed at $12,700.

Chris Johnson, Habitat’s volunteer attorney, said a survey of the lot will be done within the next few weeks.

Dividing the existing half-acre parcel isn’t as simple as cutting it in half, Johnson said.

The property offered to Habitat is behind the woman’s home and is now used as a garden. It lacks the 80 feet of frontage that county zoning regulations require, but would be accessible from the street by a paved driveway. Habitat is seeking an administrative exemption to the frontage requirement, Johnson said.

If the county grants an administrative exemption, neighbors would be notified and could appeal if they object to the proposal.

Subdividing the property also requires approval from the Spokane Valley Fire District, the county health district and half a dozen other agencies.

“You just don’t divvy up land anymore like they used to,” Johnson said. “But we have a grip on what we need to do. … I’m assuming that everything is going to work out.”

Such a process typically takes six to nine months, said John Nunnery of the county Planning Department. If everything goes as planned, construction of the house could start this fall, said Hadley.

The donor will give the building site to Valley Baptist’s Clarence Hart Habitat Fund. The gift is contingent, on the county’s approval of the plan to subdivide the lot.

Hart, a longtime church member who died last year at 83, was an active Habitat volunteer. He was involved in the construction of several Habitat houses in the Spokane area.

“Because of Clarence’s interest in Habitat, we encouraged people to give a $50 share or whatever they could give above their church pledge to help build a fund that would be used for the building of a house in the Valley,” said Ed Porter, a Valley Baptist member who also is a Habitat volunteer.

In addition to the building site, the congregation has raised about $2,000 for the fund. Habitat needs about $35,000 to $40,000 to build the house, which will be sold to a low-income family for about the same price. Construction labor will be done by volunteers.

Porter said Valley Baptist is looking for another church to cosponsor the project.