Construction is starting on one of the biggest affordable homeownership projects Bainbridge Island has seen. Housing Resources Bainbridge held a groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 25 for Finch Green, a neighborhood of 22 single-family homes on land donated by Bethany Lutheran Church, the Bainbridge Island Review reported.
The homes on Bainbridge Island, Washington, will be sold to families earning 80% of the area median income or less, and they will stay affordable for good.
The homes
Finch Green will have 22 two- to four-bedroom houses, ranging from 800 to 1,400 square feet, according to an earlier Review report. Seven will meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards. The remaining 15 will have zero-step, wider entries and a ground-floor bathroom that can fit a wheelchair.
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The houses are clustered close together. The architect said they will take up only 1.25 acres of the parcel, using the church's existing parking lot instead of driveways and keeping the mature trees in the buffers. The site sits between Finch Road, Sportsman Club Road and High School Road.
The price is the headline. A three-bedroom Finch Green home is expected to cost $340,000. By comparison, recent Northwest Multiple Listing Service data puts the average three-bedroom sale at $1,634,679 on Bainbridge Island and $700,130 across Kitsap County.
How it stays affordable
The homes join the HRB community land trust. Buyers own the house and lease the land under it. The ground lease limits appreciation to 1.5% a year, compounded, and future sales must go to other income-eligible households. There are just 75 income-restricted homes for sale on the island today, and all of them are in that trust, according to HRB.
"Community land trusts reset the whole notion of homeownership," HRB executive director Phedra Elliott said.
How it got here
The church received the land as an eight-acre gift almost 75 years ago. The October report says roughly six acres were donated to HRB; the May report describes an eight-acre site, so the donation appears to be a portion of the church property. Bethany Lutheran formed its own nonprofit, Finch Green LLC, to see the project through, using a 2019 state law that gives religious groups a density bonus for affordable housing on their land.
The subdivision application went to the City of Bainbridge Island in September 2025 to create a separate tax parcel for each home, with building permits to follow approval. The project went before the planning commission and a hearing examiner this spring.
State money is a big share of the funding: $3.3 million from the Washington State Housing Trust Fund and $1.6 million from the state Commerce Department's Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program. The rest comes from home sales and an HRB capital campaign.
Sources
- HRB breaks ground at Finch Green development, Bainbridge Island Review
- Finch Green housing project on track for fall groundbreaking, Bainbridge Island Review
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