Set aside the cooling housing market. From District-based Mi Casa Inc., which builds about a half-dozen houses every year and redevelops small multifamily buildings, to the Community Preservation and Development Corp., a regional developer of big multifamily complexes, local nonprofits are confronting the realities of a changed housing market.

They would buy properties nobody wanted. The housing boom has also claimed existing affordable housing around the region, as building owners found it a lot more profitable to turn buildings into luxury condos than to rent to moderate-income families or those who qualified for government-subsidized Section 8 housing.

Rather than trying to buy houses directly from owners, Fernando Lemos, Mi Casa's founder and executive director, focuses on getting property through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the District's Home Again program, which takes control of vacant, deteriorated parcels and sells them to developers.

To keep costs down, Lemos and his staff also began building market-rate houses to offset costs in the houses it sells to families of lesser means. For example, the group was recently able to sell a $160,000 two-bedroom unit in Southeast Washington for $100,000, thanks to a home it sold in Northwest for a profit.

Karen Cleveland, executive director, said that in Northern Virginia, construction of affordable homes by the local Habitat for Humanity chapter nearly stopped four years ago when its pipeline of land dried up.. After developing 18 homes in 2003, the group was able to build only one house the following year, two in 2005 and two this year.

The group just broke ground on its first condominium project, in Fairfax County, and is working with Arlington County to convert an apartment building into a three-story, 12-unit condo. The condo market has shifted.

By M. Sese
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