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Bungalow Court in Hard Bargain
Breaking ground last fall, two more houses were added at Bungalow Courts in the Hard Bargain neighborhood.
“It’s just been piecemealed over time,” Hard Bargain Association director Brant Bousquet said. “We weren’t working consistently or continually for the past eight years. We have a lot of volunteers and they are helping us out and if we could go out and hire architect or a planner and pay top-dollar market rate it would happen a lot quicker.”
The association accomplishes its mission of preserving and revitalizing the Hard Bargain/Mount Hope neighborhood in several ways. Through donations and volunteers, the group coordinates home repairs and remodeling for existing homes often housing elderly and disabled residents. The group also builds new homes on lots in the old neighborhood, which generally are sold at below-market prices to qualified buyers.
The price of the Bungalow Court houses range from $120,000 to $150,000, and sizes ranging from 980 to 2,000 square feet. That is affordable housing in Franklin, where the median home price this past spring was reported at about $425,000.
The nonprofit can only go so fast with housing construction, but it has made efforts in making the turnaround for homebuyers a smooth process while contractors built their houses. Six lots total exist for the project.
It takes about five or six months to build a house. That slows down when it gets cold and rainy. Bousquet is hoping that by January the houses will be completed.
Stephen Murray, executive director of Community Housing Partnership, mostly deals with helping homeowners qualify for these houses. He said that there is a waiting list with dozens of names on it.
But it’s also a process for those wanting these houses in making sure their credit history will allow for a mortgage, which Murray helps them obtain through financial coaching.
“Most of them have issues they need to fix before they can even buy a house much less a Hard Bargain House,” Murray said. “But once they get the qualification, we sit down with them and Brant and draw up the contract.”
Bousquet said he hoped that the neighborhood will continue to come together with the remaining lots, but he understood that it will take more time than just the upcoming fall.
“You have to be patient, and we are grateful,” he said. “It doesn’t always come on our timetable, and that’s the down side for a project. If we had unlimited funds and buckets overflowing with money, we would have had this done a lot sooner. But it takes a while to get those donations, and we know that.”
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