About Us

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Our Mission

~ Nurture, train, and support each other as a fellowship of local Placemakers who transform our neighborhoods as we need them to be today, using our exchanged wisdoms, paired with local expertise.

~ Use our collective clout to garner local government, lender, and community respect for the small project developer/placemaker that eases the path to getting neighborhood projects done.

~ Help our State leaders realize that Neighborhood Placemakers are vital, valuable small entrepreneurs. As such, we are the backbone of our economy. Policy that makes us more able to do our work makes the State prosper!

To be successful, Placemakers need to cross silos and know “enough” about many disciplines. I learned this first-hand, with my experience in construction, project management, small home and collaborative living design, policy advocacy and income real estate assessment and finance. Accumulating so much expertise usually takes time and multiple projects, but as a housing advocate and expert, my focus is filling in the gaps in your knowledge so you become a strong generalist who can envision and realize your projects.

What ties all this together is my passion: wanting housing that truly serves us, as we are today. I believe that people who care about where they live create more responsive places with more distinct character. Yet those who develop solely for profit tend to be the dominant players. I started NPN to change that, with your help! I want to nurture an eco-system of Neighborhood Placemakers who listen and then respond with incremental change that evolves neighborhoods for the better. As a catalyst, I want to educate, and energize you to do the good work!

Loni's Experience

Fiscal Project Management. During my work for urbanist planners, I helped project managers track budgets, schedules and coordinate their sub teams to be timely.

Housing design/build/development. It was inevitable. Marrying someone who was 6’9” meant I’d take my income real estate knowledge, and add it to his General Contractors’ skills to start our design/build firm, Graybuilt. I was the Design Partner and General Manager responsible for acquisitions. Together we redesigned and rebuilt multiple small homes, some condemned. (They weren’t sexy ADUs back then, but 400-750sf modest residences.) I worked in the trenches as well, swinging a hammer, mudding walls, and laying floors, as well as making resists for one-of-a-kind sand-blasted windows. I learned to make small homes feel rich and satisfying, and bring them back to market to better serve new owners.

During the Great Recession, I evolved my small house design into privacy suites around common elements in larger collaborative homes. (And went on to live this way for the next decade.) The ADU, cottage cluster, pocket neighborhood, and other collaborative living environments are such important opportunities to live with support around us! This is how we stay where we’ve put down roots and built networks of family and friends. It’s healthy, resilient and wise. More exploration into designing how we live is part of what I encourage Placemakers to do.

In 2016, I became a founding member of the ADU Task Force in California that kicked off the ADU movement, and I worked to help create policy. I helped homeowners, investors and cooperative groups understand the process of development to realize their visions and designs.

Advocacy. I continue my work for better local and state legislation for clearer ordinances, striving to makes the permit process consistent and efficient. And I work to broaden the kinds of housing that qualifies for loan assistance so we expand wealth-building opportunities.

Trainings & Workshops. I’ve made housing policy not only understandable, but exciting to homeowners, investors, realtors and community groups as well as design/build professionals.

At NPN, I’m bringing all this together, listening to what you need and gathering all the local experts who can give you a solid foundation about how the process succeeds here.

With Special Thanks:

Samuel Yerke, Architect and Illustrator

Lynn Morgan, Sustainable NW Wood

Charles A Long, Developer

Thanks to:

Connect with Us

loni@neighborhoodplacemakers.net

Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations by Samuel Yerke.