Driving south on Schaffer Mill Road in Truckee, navigating between wealthy communities such as Schaffer’s Mill, Martis Camp, and Lahontan, a small offshoot provides access to Hopkins Village, a 50-unit affordable housing project with quite the storied history.
To purchase in the single-road neighborhood, one must fit the buyer requirements: household income at 180% or lower Area Median Income (in 2025, this is $152,190 for one person) and working an average of at least 30 hours a week for an employment site within Tahoe Truckee Unified School District boundaries. The units — three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom half-plexes — currently sell for $615,000 to individuals and market rate to employers looking to house employees. As of press deadline, two units remain for sale.
But the affordability aspect has sputtered since the neighborhood’s completion. The Hopkins Village Homeowners Association faces a $76,582 deficit, and the first residents to move in have seen their HOA dues rise by 146%, from a quarterly $420 in December 2022 to $1,037. This in addition to supplemental tax bills after a delay in parcel reassessment. Now, to shore up a projected operating loss, residents are required to pay a special assessment to the tune of an additional $1,500 per unit by Feb. 1, 2026.
“This [special] assessment is intended to cover,” stated a notice sent to all Hopkins residents in August, “the cost of the California Fair Plan fire insurance for 2025, offset accumulated operating losses, and begin repaying reserve funds that were borrowed over the past two to three years to manage rising operating expenses.”
“I could afford this when I moved in,” a current resident told Moonshine. “My theory was, well, I’ll progressively make more money and maybe the interest rates will go down, or as I pay more off the mortgage, I’m going to be lowering my payments. I felt pretty confident going into it and had no idea all of these other things could come so quick, so expensive. I truly feel for the people who are here with kids on fixed incomes. What are they supposed to do?”
Placer County Tahoe Housing Specialist Tim Cussen said Hopkins Village residents are experiencing the same financial pains others are. “I wish insurance wasn’t so crazy in California,” he continued. “And I certainly feel for them. That is a sharp increase, especially if they were at all borderline comfortable with the cost and then all of a sudden they go up [and residents] had to absorb not only the monthly, but the special assessment … I think all homeowners associations in California, especially in the Basin or in Tahoe in general, Truckee, Placer, Nevada County — they’re all feeling the same crunch.”
A recently released U.S. Census Bureau study found that the average monthly payment for California condo/HOA households in 2024 was $278. Hopkins residents’ monthly payment is $345, plus the $300 special assessment per month from October 2025 through February 2026.
“How do we best prepare people for the total cost of home ownership?” asked Placer County District 5 Supervisor Cindy Gustafson. “Partly, it’s these unseen costs. Insurance, there’s no cap on it. [Residents] can predict their mortgage, their utility bills are going up, mostly out of their control … but fire insurance … it is incredibly expensive for all of us.”
Hopkins Village’s complex history began when the Martis Camp development was approved back in 2003. On condition of its approval, the Placer County Board of Supervisors required the construction of 50 workforce housing units. Thus, Hopkins Village.
The first 10 units were constructed by the original developer, DMB/Highlands Group, in the early 2000s. But the Great Recession’s impact on market-rate homes stalled further progress, and DMB/Highlands was allowed to let the rest of the project languish.
It wouldn’t be until 2020 that forward progress on the remaining 40 units was made, when DMB/Highlands, Placer County, and local developer Dan Fraiman signed a contract for DMB/Highlands to give Fraiman the Hopkins Village land so he could bring the project across the finish line.
Even that final leg faced hurdles. Fraiman told Moonshine in 2023 the project faced, as reporter Julie Brown wrote, “millions of dollars in losses, much of which stacked up when unavoidable global challenges stymied the construction industry from the outset of the [Covid-19] pandemic: supply-chain delays, skyrocketing prices for materials, truck driver shortages, repairing damaged modular units, and other issues.”
After a back-and-forth with Placer County, the Hopkins Village price per unit for qualifying workforce residents was increased from $550,000 to $615,000.
As a homeowners association in California, Hopkins Village is not explicitly required by statute to maintain financial reserves, though maintenance of such is generally recognized to be a sound practice within the Davis-Sterling Act and other California court decisions. For example, Civil Code § 5550 requires an HOA board to conduct a reserve study to inspect “the accessible areas of the major components that the association is obligated to repair, replace, restore, or maintain.” The reserve funding plan lays out how the HOA expects to fund such components.
I think all homeowners associations in California, especially in the Basin or in Tahoe in general, Truckee, Placer, Nevada County — they’re all feeling the same crunch.”
~ Tim Cussen, Tahoe Housing Specialist, Placer County
Hopkins’ reserve fund balance has dwindled over the past two years, according to the HOA’s 2025 budget, which was shared with Moonshine Ink by a resident. The HOA’s total budgetary forecast for 2025, which includes anticipated dues, reserve fund replenishment, fund losses from previous years, fire insurance, and expenses puts it $76,582 in the hole. With the special assessment being levied, that loss goes down to $1,582.
Some of the largest 2024 expenses, of a total of $156,211, were insurance at $62,750 ($45,000 was budgeted) and snow removal at $37,500 ($30,000 had been budgeted).
The most expensive anticipated 2025 line item is insurance, at $82,500 (a 31% increase from 2024). Other notable expenses: Snow removal at $40,000 (6.6% increase); management at $31,947 (equal to 2024).
Hopkins HOA board members declined to comment.
One major point of consternation over the budget is the claim that the large deficit is due in part to “a previous decision by the builder, who held the majority vote at the time, to not sufficiently increase HOA dues to cover the rising operational costs.” This is an excerpt from a public comment submitted by Hopkins Village resident Andrea Buxton in June (and undersigned by other residents and HOA board members).
Cussen said he has not seen anything to substantiate the claim.
Fraiman stated, “I paid the dues for years. What happened is you didn’t have all the costs. The insurance was less because there weren’t 20 more buildings sitting there, there weren’t 40 more driveways to plow. All the costs were much lower … We started finishing units and then somebody would be like, ‘Oh, I need to get my roof shoveled,’ and the HOA would go shovel the roof … All of a sudden you had a lot of people there who all had needs.”
He also wonders if the HOA reserve was being paid into while Martis Camp owned the property, since Fraiman didn’t acquire the land until 2020.
“I would guess that there’s probably a lot of HOAs that are finding themselves in a pinch where construction costs have gone up. They have not been saving enough money, and now they’re hit with these maintenance costs and they have to do these assessments.”
MBK Chapman, a California-based legal practice of real estate attorneys, noted in a 2026 fact sheet, “Years of underfunded reserves are now colliding with the real costs of repairing roofs, roads, elevators, pools, and façades. More and more associations that failed to save responsibly are resorting to special assessments in the $40,000 [to] $60,000 range per unit.”
“Boards that neglected to save gradually are now resorting to one-time demands that devastate homeowners financially,” another MBK Chapman article stated. The law office added that HOAs in general have raised regular assessment dues as well.
Buxton became a resident of Hopkins Village in August 2024. She considers the fact that she had a down payment from a residence she’d just sold in Tahoe City the only reason she was able to afford to live there in the first place.
Buxton has been vocal about her affordability concerns by making the aforementioned public comment to Placer County, applying for a North Tahoe Community Alliance grant to cover the deficit (which failed), and compiling a letter of support from fellow Hopkins Village residents.
I personally believe people have to hope they can own a piece of this area. You’ll rent for a while; we all did … with the hope you can purchase. I’m committed to solutions that give that hope to that future workforce that they can grow roots here.”
~ Supervisor Cindy Gustafson, Placer County District 5
One solution Buxton suggested was requesting that Placer County take on road maintenance and snow plowing to eliminate about $40,000 from the HOA’s budget. “Why should the low-income housing development have to pay for their own road maintenance and snowplowing when (some) rich neighborhoods don’t do that?” she asked.
Cussen said such a request (which has been made many times by more developments than Hopkins Village) is unlikely, as it would set a precedent. Furthermore, he added, feasibility is an issue: “There aren’t any county-maintained roads anywhere near Hopkins Village … [The closest is] a few miles away … State Route 267 is maintained by the state, and Schaffer Mill Road is a private road maintained privately by, I think, the collective of golf course communities.”
While Placer County created the Hopkins Village condition of approval for the Martis Camp development, the jurisdiction has no connection aside from ensuring the deed restriction is met.
“Placer County is not affiliated with the HOA in any way,” Cussen said. “We don’t have any legal obligation or ability to step in. We are not a property owner there, so we really have no formal affiliation with the homeowners association. We have been asked by the homeowners association to provide funding, which we had explored, but have not provided for fear of the precedent that it sets.”
Sup. Gustafson said she did reach out to residential communities adjacent to Hopkins, asking if they could incorporate the 50-home neighborhood into their snowplow coverage area. “I have not heard back,” she said. “It is certainly something that we could look for partnership from those groups. But if we take care of Hopkins snow removal, what about [the other affordable housing neighborhoods?]”
Multiple workforce housing projects in Truckee/Tahoe function as tax credit projects, such as Coldstream Commons, Kings Beach Housing, and Truckee Artist Lofts — with more on the way.
“All tax credit projects are rentals,” Cussen explained. “You don’t have homeowner’s association dues, per se. But when the jurisdiction is doing for-sale and ownership opportunities for lower income or income-restricted units, they do have kind of a calculation method where the maximum cost of ownership, including the homeowner’s dues, cannot exceed a certain place in relation to that income level.”
Hopkins Village is the only deed-restricted for-sale project in Eastern Placer County.
The Martis Fund provides down-payment assistance to qualified working families in Eastern Placer and the Town of Truckee. Hopkins Village residents can qualify, though the fund did not have a specific amount that’s been dedicated to them. Placer County has its First-Time Homebuyer Loan Program, though applications are not currently being accepted because of a high volume of submissions.
“I personally believe people have to hope they can own a piece of this area,” Gustafson said. “You’ll rent for a while; we all did … with the hope you can purchase. I’m committed to solutions that give that hope to that future workforce that they can grow roots here. [Hopkins Village] may give us ideas of how we ensure they’re adequately prepared … I’m very hopeful because I think these people just bought at a time when the insurance just went off the charts and hopefully it’ll come back down.”
Fraiman was asked in May 2023 if he regretted the project. Then, he said everything was still up in the air as it wasn’t yet completed.
Now, he says: “The chips are still falling. I haven’t actually sold all the units yet with that, and I’m still paying taxes, insurance, water bills, heating bills. I would say I don’t regret the project. For Truckee and a landmark project as one of the first, if not the only for-sale deed restricted project around … I have had people who bought units call me and thank me for such an amazing, affordably-priced house and how thankful they actually are to own a home in Truckee. Imagine that [for the] evil developer.”
Financially, though, Fraiman said the project is a failure.
“The construction cost is more than what we’re selling the units for,” he said. “And now the cost to still carry the [unsold] units. When I started, I thought those things would be sold in two years. … [But] I have six bedrooms, two units, and zero calls on ’em. The insurance is insane for an unoccupied finished unit.”
Further, Fraiman is frustrated by the lack of interest by employers amid an employee housing crisis that’s plagued the Truckee/North Tahoe region for years. He said he’s spoken with Tahoe Forest Health System, the Tahoe Truckee Workforce Housing JPA, Alterra and Vail ski resorts, golf courses, local small businesses, and more.
“I could not get one entity, one business in Truckee to buy one unit,” Fraiman said. “Everyone says, ‘Hey, we need housing for our employees.’ This is why this project is such an enigma for me, as I thought what we were building was something that was in high demand.”
While employer-owned housing in Hopkins Village is allowed to be sold at market rate, Fraiman said he’s willing to offer the $615,000 price to interested parties.
Current Hopkins homeowners can resell their homes at market rate.
“If the bottom falls out and they have to sell for other changes in their life, they can sell for market rate,” Gustafson said, “but we don’t want to see that. We want to keep these people in our community.
