Photo by Noah Adams/NPR
Community homesteading has captured my heart and my imagination. And it seems I’m not alone.
A flurry of social media activity surrounded this article introducing the concept. Readers overwhelmingly expressed how homesteading could help revitalize their communities. I even heard from a handful of out-of-state artists (one as far away as Seattle) interested in relocating to West Virginia.
You might also recall a bipartisan group of delegates from Kanawha and Fayette Counties introduced a bill during the 2016 legislative session to create a homesteading pilot program. Although the bill died, there’s a possibility it could be reworked and introduced again next year.
Why all the fuss?
Before and after of a home purchased through the Paducah Artist Relocation Program. Photo by Paducah Artist Renaissance Alliance.
Community homesteading programs encourage individuals and families to purchase, renovate, and reside in vacant and dilapidated homes by offering a financial incentive (e.g. loan, grant, tax break, or other monetary benefit). Potential benefits include:
- Rehabilitation of vacant and dilapidated homes;
- Rebuilding the tax base;
- Economic diversification through sector development;
- Substantial return on investment.
But what does homesteading really look like in practice?
It turns out homesteading can take many forms — and go by many different names. Check out just a few of the successful homesteading efforts from other states.
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Farnsworth Street – Detroit, Michigan
A grassroots efforts to stabilize Farnsworth Street by purchasing and rehabbing vacant homes one-by-one and farming the surrounding vacant lots — all done by individuals of modest means.
Over the years, rehabbers and community-minded renters and homebuyers worked out informal incentives, including reduced rent and seller-financed home sales, often in exchange for some agricultural work. Get a better sense of “the block that blight forgot.”
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Artist Relocation Program – Paducah, Kentucky
The City of Paducah revitalized one of its most historic and most rundown neighborhoods by offering artists city-held properties for as low as $1. A local bank also offered low-interest loans with no down payment for the full cost of buying and restoring property.
Since the program’s launch in 2000, over 75 artists and residents invested more than $30 million to restore the neighborhood. The city has invested $2 million — and so received a $14 return on every $1 invested. For more information about Paducah’s success, check out this article.
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Oil City Artist Relocation Program – Oil City, Pennsylvania
In a city of roughly 10,000 people, more than 30 are artists that have purchased homes through the Oil City Artist Relocation Program. Because the program connects artists with local realtors and existing financial incentives, the true key to its success is a national marketing campaign. Learn more about the impact the program and the arts have had on Oil City.
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Greater Circle Living – Cleveland, Ohio
Over the past 10 years, Greater Circle Living has encouraged more than 300 employees of organizations based in Cleveland’s University Circle neighborhood to live near their workplaces by offering forgivable loans for down payment assistance and matching funds for exterior renovations.
Reach out to me at n.marrocco@wvhub.org if you’re interested in homesteading, or if you know of a similar program in West Virginia or out-of-state that we should spotlight.
Hi Nicole. I love this article. It’s exactly what I have been trying to do in Hinton since 1978, and I know all about Paducah KY and incorporated the idea into some of Hinton’s earlier planning. (See Hinton 2010, a Vision Created)by former mayor Cleo Mathews.
I’m very interested in any help I can get on developing my homestead for creativity. I have been persuing a co housing concept, which I believe we discussed earlier in person!!! Thanks for this.
I think I got the name wrong, ” Hinton 2010 A vision Shared”, for the document
Something I think that could be done in Welch and McDowell county with the adequate help and direction from the Hub.. Many buildings that looks like they in disrepair could easily be saved for housing use, or even tourism use…
It worked in the 60s and 70s when the hippie homesteaders arrived in West Virginia. It could again.
I want to relocate in Tenn. with the homestad act that I can have a home to live in and renavate IAM a plumber/ elect. / carpenter i have done this kind of work for over 20 yrs. plz help me find a place that I can fix up so I can have a home and be proud of what I have done to make the comunity look nice plz help me
This is exactly what this area needs! Thanks for all your hard work Nicole!
Hi. Links below are the only products of a video documentary project I had to abandon in 2006 or so — but not before I did interviews with about 25 formerly urban WV back-to-the-landers.
The agency I was working with at the time got its US funding cut, forcing me to move on to other things….
– clips arranged into ideas….
– a sort of a trailer/mission statement.
Thanks for your work/interest. Looks good.
-Topper Sherwood
journalist/writer
Berlin
Wiith this kind of incentive my husband and I would love to move somewhere and work on out own home.
We are a couple of very modest means working 40 hours a week to barely afford rent and bills.
Stories like this really give me hope that there are real life opportunities out there for first time home owners.
Great idea. Am doing my own self funded version of this, converting an old post office building in West Union into my home and studio. The building is within sight of the North Bend Rail Trail and the renovation features the building itself as a work of art. It would be good if WV like Ireland were to encourage artists to locate here by giving tax breaks to them. Having been an artist and performer most my life I’ve noticed how areas I’ve worked in come up, but the artist with no grub stake has to move on as the rent increases. Locations that can cultivate permanent artist habitation will not loose their arch(art) angels of development.
Another thought about art and taxing agencies. When I worked as a street performer in Helen, GA, I had to get a business license to run a pedi-cab but not to be a street performer. In fact the city said I could not even consider myself a business because I was practicing my first amendment rights which can not be regulated by license. They came to this enlightened conclusion because several street performers took them to court when they tried to make them get business licenses. I believe it went all the way to the supreme court. Apparently practicing art is a first amendment right that can’t legally be regulated… or taxed?