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Waunakee CDA discusses down-payment assistance and community land trust options; schedules data and visioning work
Summary
CDA members discussed down-payment assistance program designs, lender concerns, and community land trust (CLT) models and agreed to a November data review and to develop a vision before pursuing partnerships or program launches.
Members of the Waunakee Community Development Authority discussed design options for a down-payment assistance program and whether to pursue a community land trust (CLT) or partner with an existing CLT.
Staff presented program models from Eagle County, Waukesha County and Madison and outlined repayment structures, including deferred repayment until sale to preserve bankability for borrowers. "Another model is that instead of, you know, a regular payment to the loan, it gets paid off when they sell their home," staff said, noting trade-offs for cash flow.
Catherine and other board members emphasized the need for local data before designing eligibility tiers. "When I first started looking at this... AMI is countywide, but looking at Waunakee specifically and then looking at the average home price... someone making 80% — would they even be able to afford a house?" Catherine asked, urging the board to consider 80–120% AMI tiers and to pull assessed values and sales data for the next meeting.
Board members also discussed the potential scale of impact and partnerships. Some questioned whether the available funds would help enough households to move local metrics (for example, school enrollment) and urged combining strategies — down-payment assistance, community land trust, TID leveraging and philanthropic matches — into an overarching vision. Several members favored partnering with the Madison Area Community Land Trust rather than building a local CLT from scratch because of operational complexity and startup costs.
The CDA agreed to dedicate its November meeting to a data review (AMI, assessed values, sales) and to draft a program vision; staff and board will invite CLT representatives and program administrators to future meetings rather than adopting a program at this session.
