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--> --> Fast-forward to Ashland's future By Joseph McKeever Ashland Closing a school is liken to an eye for an eye. We soon become blind. Double classroom size and we dilute the product. Lay off teachers school librarians, service persons, cancel fine arts, sports and we kill the dream. This is a university town with a respected education department and we are debating closing a grade school! What is wrong with this picture? How quickly things appear to change while things all along have been changing. Let us fast- foreword to the future. Daily Tidings headline, Year 2005: Parks Dept. Buys Old Vacant Briscoe and Lincoln School Sites With Remaining Food Tax Dollars. Plans to Build Two New Parks. Year 2006: Oregon Shakespeare Festival Discusses Move. Officials Claim Lack of Affordable Housing for Employees. City Ponders Rent Control. Things like these may or may not happen but we cannot afford to sit around and wait. We must think outside of the box. I am confident those people working on solving the school budget problem realize that the lack of affordable housing is a key player in lower enrollment in the schools. Keeping young families with school age kids in our city must be a priority. Escalating rents and land costs are driving families out of tow. A vehicle to help with this problem is the Ashland Community Land Trust (ACLT). ACLT is thinking outside of the box. ACLT is a non-profit that purchases land for affordable housing. The "outside the box" part is that ACLT holds the land in trust and creates renewable 99-year leases thus removing the cost of the land from the development side of housing. This is a profound savings. Since the land is in trust it is not effected by increasing values thus insuring long-term affordability. Improvements stay in the program in perpetuity. Home owners with ACLT abide by resale formulas restricting equity and tenants have the security of knowing that rent will be an affordable part of their budget again. Lowering the monthly percentage of dollars spent on housing will inject more dollars into the community. Those of you who have not looked at recent affordable housing alternatives in the past few years will be surprised. The land trust system works. It is working right now in Ashland. ACLT was created through the City of Ashland Housing Commission by volunteers and is currently run by volunteers whose "outside of the box" thinking has created a sustainable affordable housing program. Every family with school age children that earns a place in an ACLT home creates dollars and jobs for schools and the business community. If you are in business, a developer, retired, a major employer in tourism, education, manufacturing then you should be concerned about present and future sustainable affordable housing. When you plan your next budget or charitable donation you should make affordable housing a priority. If you are one of the hundreds of people that are a casualty of the housing crisis then you need to be involved in order to help yourselves. Please support the Ashland Community Land Trust or other affordable housing programs in our city. Get involved. Do not blame local government. Remember that we are the government. The thought of a quiet schoolyard at normal recess time is appalling. For more information write to Ashland Community Land Trust, PO Box 3027, Ashland, Ore. 97520. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing