Solarize the Land Trust: Homestead Community Land Trust

Homestead Community Land Trust and Spark Northwest partnered to help community land trust members install residential solar systems on their homes in 2019.

Solarize the Land Trust featured free educational solar energy workshops coupled with a group purchase discount opportunity and a simplified purchasing process, and grants to homeowners to help pay for solar. Through this program, we educated 81 people about adding solar to their homes, 11 homeowners installed solar and 10 received grants. In total 48.6 kW of solar were installed on permanently affordable housing.

Homestead Community Land Trust makes it possible for low and moderate income residents of King County to own their own home. It was founded in 1992 to stop the displacement of low- to moderate-income people from rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in King County. Homestead builds and rehab homes; make and keeps them affordable permanently through the community land trust model; and supports homeowners in successful ownership. Homestead has 215 homes in trust, and is one of the largest community land trusts in Washington State.

We also partnered with Environmental Coalitions of South Seattle (ECOSS) to provide multicultural outreach. ECOSS contact 23 homeowners in their preferred language, educated 3 people with simultaneous translation at workshops, and helped 2 homeowners through the installation process.

Who is eligible?

Workshops are free and open to the public to learn more about solar, so invite your friends and neighbors too!

Homestead homeowners will be eligible to apply for the grant. Additional information about eligibility and the selection process will be available at the workshops. Download the grant application.

Partners

Homestead Community Land Trust

Funders

Thank you to our generous funders who have made this program possible.

All Points North Foundation

Ren Che Foundation
Tudor Foundation
Union Bank

Community-Selected Contractor

A team of Homestead homeowners selected Puget Sound Solar through a competitive process to provide group purchase solar installations to homeowners.

Puget Sound Solar