Kelly Westlund sees herself as a kind of evangelist, “spreading the good news” about how to make homes affordable—not just today but in the future as well—using the land trust model, which is gaining ground across Wisconsin and throughout the nation.

Now the deputy administrator for Bayfield County, Westlund was a driving force in the creation of the Chequamegon Bay United Impact Land Trust (CheqBUILT), which hopes to have its first affordable homes by the end of the year. And those homes won’t just be affordable for their first buyers; they’ll remain affordable when they are sold again, and again, and again.

As a land trust, CheqBUILT will acquire homes—by buying or building them or through donations—and sell them at affordable prices. The trust also can subsidize the purchase price by helping to cover a gap between the home’s cost and the loan amount a would-be buyer can obtain. CheqBUILT will retain ownership of the land the homes are on, and while buyers can later sell their homes for some profit, there will be restrictions on the sellers’ asking price, ensuring the home will remain affordable for the next buyers into the future.

Meeting a need

“Bayfield County for several years in a row now has identified housing as a top concern,” according to Westlund, with businesses saying, “I can’t attract workers,” because the people they would hire can’t afford to live there. “We established early on that this was a regional issue,” Westlund said of the need for affordable housing in rural Bayfield and Ashland counties.

Several years ago, the county teamed up with the University of Wisconsin Division of Extension to conduct a regional housing study. “It gave us a lot of good information,” Westlund says. In particular, the recreational getaway community has attracted many retired seniors who are now looking to age in place and downsize their housing. “There were no options available to them,” says Westlund, noting that if the kind of housing those seniors were interested in—single-level homes with an attached garage to protect cars from winter conditions—were available, it could have a ripple effect as those seniors’ current homes could be sold to others, including those in the workforce.

The study led to the creation of a housing outreach specialist position. Enter Westlund, who was urged to explore any and all ideas for addressing affordable housing needs. Rather than trying find a silver bullet, she says, “They encouraged me to try for silver buckshot”—meaning a multifaceted solution instead of looking for a single cure-all.

Before Westlund came on board in 2023, the county had identified three areas to focus on:

1. Comprehensive zoning reform
2. Support for emerging developers (“We have a hard time attracting the big, well-established companies,” Westlund says)
3. A “buy-out, buy-in,” or BOBI, approach, which focuses on finding homeowners who are ready to sell and then finding ways to make their homes affordable to potential buyers.

Once Westlund began doing research, she said, “The community land trust model surfaced pretty quickly.” Kellie Pederson, community development director with UW Extension in Bayfield County—who was involved in the effort from the start and is now CheqBUILT’s board president—agreed that a land trust made “a lot of sense,” Westlund added. So they went to the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority, which had launched its Rural Affordable Workforce Housing Initiative to provide technical assistance and funding to identify innovative strategies that could be replicated, and said, “We want to build a community land trust.” WHEDA provided the funding to hire a community land trust consultant.