New houses for $150K was goal for Maquoketa neighborhood

MAQUOKETA — Dan and Nancy Jensen were living in North Carolina, dreaming of moving back to northeast Iowa for retirement, when Nancy found an online listing that seemed too good to be true.

“We were thinking of coming back, but there wasn’t anything affordable,” Nancy, 65, said. “I kept seeing this new house for this price and I thought ‘this can’t be real’.”

An 1,060-square-foot, two-bedroom house with new appliances, two-car garage and an unfinished basement was selling for $150,000. It was one of 10 houses in a pocket neighborhood of affordable houses in Maquoketa, a city of 6,000 between Davenport and Dubuque.

The Jensens visited Bear River Cottages in August 2021 and signed a contract. They closed on the house and moved in last May. Now all 10 houses are full, with six inhabited by retirees and others a mix of families and single professionals.

Affordable housing needed

Bear River Cottages was the brainchild of Kelley Deutmeyer, executive director of the East Central Intergovernmental Association, based in Dubuque. She’d seen pocket neighborhoods, with small houses and shared green space, nestled into East Coast cities.

“I thought that concept would be really great for our rural areas and making them affordable homes,” Deutmeyer said.

Maquoketa was trying to add 325 single-family, affordable houses by 2025 to recruit workers. Jackson County had a parcel of land northeast of Highways 61 and 64 they were willing to sell for $10 per lot.

“The pieces just kind of fell together,” Deutmeyer said.

But developing the neighborhood wasn’t quick or easy. It required “layers and layers” of funding to keep the sale price at $150,000, especially as supply chain breakdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic caused the price of materials to climb, Deutmeyer said.

Student engineers

Three University of Iowa civil engineering undergraduate students — Tanner Schropp, Mayra Corona and Morgan Kinney — developed the original design plans for Bear River Cottages as part of their senior capstone project in 2018.

“We wanted to make a sense of community without it being a basic retirement neighborhood,” said Schropp, now 27 and working as an engineer in Denver.

The students created a plan for how the houses would sit in two rows with a sidewalk down the middle, designed the underground utility plan and modeled an access road that would be easily accessible by emergency vehicles. They provided the project leaders with several options and made requested changes, Deutmeyer said.

“I thought they did a great job and it was more than I expected,” she said. When project leaders put the construction out for bid, they shared the UI plans with the contractor, saving time and money.

The City of Maquoketa extended water and sewer lines to the new neighborhood, paying for the project with $450,000 in tax increment financing.

Down payment aid

One of the hurdles to homeownership is coming up with enough cash for a down payment so that monthly mortgage payments are manageable.

The Eastern Iowa Regional Housing Corporation Local Housing Trust Fund contributed about $25,000 per unit toward construction costs of Bear River Cottages and provided each buyer $10,000 in down payment assistance. The Iowa Economic Development Authority kicked in another $15,000 toward each down payment.

“That helped because the households didn’t need to have mortgage insurance because they had a heavier down payment,” Deutmeyer said.

Residents who stay in their house for five years do not need to repay the aid.

Other partners helped pay for appliances, landscaping and electrical hookups.

Residents thrive

The project broke ground in 2019 and people started moving in by 2021. Debi Durham, Iowa Economic Development Authority director, came to a ribbon-cutting ceremony last September.

Tim and Judy Martin, who lived in Linn County for years, love their new house off Bear River Drive. Judy, 71, has the lavender bedroom she always wanted — they got to pick up to three interior paint colors — and Tim, 71, likes that he doesn’t have to mow or shovel show as those tasks are covered by the Homeowners Association, of which he is president.

Teresa Hosch, 74, was the first buyer at Bear River Cottages. She’d heard about the land sale while working as news director at KMAQ, Maquoketa’s local radio station. “I just loved the idea of having a new house where I wouldn’t have things breaking down,” she said.

Deutmeyer would like to see more pocket neighborhoods of affordable houses in Iowa and has talked with several other communities about Bear River Cottages. The challenge, she said, is keeping building costs low enough to qualify for financial assistance only available for affordable housing projects.

“If you have willing partners, it can be replicated,” she said.

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com