The apartments for low-income seniors will be maintained with city help.

With nearly 30 members, they are hardly the typical family unit envisioned by some affordable housing advocates.

Nonetheless, the residents of the Finch Place Apartments share coffee, laughs, a roof and a common stake in their home, a low-income senior apartment complex on the quiet Winslow street after which their building was named.

They refer to themselves affectionately – and with a collective wink – as the “party people,” casting aside yet another archaic assumption, namely that the silver-haired crowd hasn’t let loose since the macarena or, worse yet, the monster mash.

Some, like Dorothy Mills, have lived at Finch Place since the building opened in 1986. Others, like Jerry and Mattie Drake, residents there for just six months, are still relative newbies.

Either way, as a group of senior citizens priced out of the soaring Bainbridge Island real estate market, affordable housing is neither a cause to pursue nor an unfortunate abstraction.

It’s the only concrete pathway to their continued inclusion in the community.

“This is home,” said resident Seessie DeMatteo, who first set foot on the island in 1917. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Now, thanks to the pending purchase of Finch Place by the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority, which will preserve the 29-unit complex as affordable housing, the party people can keep their groove.

The Bainbridge Island City Council tonight will decide whether to allocate $197,809 from the city’s Housing Trust Fund to assist KCCHA, a countywide agency founded in 1982 to provide affordable housing, with the $1.9 million purchase.

The current building owner’s restrictive use agreement maintains the property as low-income senior housing, but will expire in December.

The Finch Place Apartments are located on a valuable piece of land in downtown Winslow, just off lower Madison Avenue behind Eagle Harbor Congregational Church and the Marge Williams Center.

Without intervention by KCCHA, it is likely the property would become market rate units.

That would almost certainly displace the current residents, most of whom would no longer be able to afford their rent.

Securing the city’s aid with the deal is vital because it would solidify the community’s support for the project and legitimize the effort in the eyes of other funding sources, according to KCCHA Housing Development Director Julie Graves.

“It’s a huge deal for us to have the city participate in this,” she said. “A lot of times people talk about affordable housing. But this is the only community that has created its own trust. That shows how committed people here are.”

In addition to that, the project marks a rare opportunity to maintain affordable housing, something much less expensive than building it anew.

Preserving Finch Place as a affordable housing will cost $61,537 per one bedroom unit, a fraction of the cost of a comparable one bedroom condominium in Winslow.

If the city signs on to the deal, KCCHA can proceed with the rest of the financing package, which includes a $982,000 federal loan that, if approved this week, would close in October.

Another $500,000 loan would come from the national nonprofit Housing Assistance Council, to be paid back over 30 years at three percent interest.

For those at Finch Place, the likely preservation of their home is welcome news.

This week, a dozen residents assembled in one of the building’s common spaces to talk about their home and what it means to them to live on Bainbridge Island.

Most expres­sed views about the natural beauty of the area and the friendly people. Others praised the transit system for shuttling them around the island to run errands.

But all talked about the importance of their tight-knit community.

“I like to call it a community within a community,” said resident manager Mary O’Connor of Finch Place’s niche on the island. “Everyone here knows each other.”

Others agreed.

“I’ve been here 15 years and I haven’t regretted a minute of it,” said Marilyn Culton. “This is such a great bunch of people.”

Mills, who has spent the last twenty years in the same unit, paused to recount the building’s “famous and funny” managers past – among them O’Connor – that she’s known through the years.

She deadpanned about needing new carpet, causing uproarious laughter among her peers.

“Now you’re going to get me in trouble,” O’Connor fired back with a chuckle.

Tucked away at the road-end, the sleepy three-story building is prim and tidy, replete with flowers on balconies and intermittent shadows cast by neighboring firs.

The top floor lounge houses the building’s library and it’s best kept secret, a not-so-inexpensive view of Eagle Harbor, which Jerry Drake – the only male resident – is happy to show to visitors.

“He brags about this place to his friends,” said his wife, Mattie, to whom Jerry gave a conciliatory nod.

Then came a question that provoked no nods, that of whether anyone there could afford to live on the island without Finch Place.

Every head in the room – filled with decades of wisdom and a myriad of lifetime experience – swiveled in unison.

DeMatteo summed up the consensus: “There’s just no way.”

Fourteen of Finch Place’s 29 units have rental assistance. Subsidized residents pay a percentage of their income to live in the 618-square-foot units, which rent for $565 per month.

O’Connor, who has managed Finch Place for a year and a half, said the building is popular and usually has about 17 people on the waiting list.

“This is important for the island’s seniors,” she said of the building’s preservation. “We have such a wonderful, talented, intelligent group of people who like to have fun.”

If the KCCHA sale goes through like Finch place residents hope, their home, and the party, can continue.

“Living here has been great,” said Jerry Drake. “I came from a big family, which is exactly what this is. Except here, we have a better view.”