Families, officials celebrate first phase of Dayton housing

Hector Roque and Jessica Ruiz’s kids were filled with glee trying to decide where to put their swingset in their new backyard. The happy couple, after nearly a two-year process, will be moving into their first home, a corner lot in Dayton, with the help of Chicanos por la Causa, and Ruiz said she was thrilled.

“The homes are great,” she said. “We’re just very thankful for it, and we feel very blessed and we can’t wait to start our lives here.”

Several area families received keys to their new homes Saturday with a warm welcome from state and county officials at the grand opening of Gold Country Estates on Glen Vista Drive, an affordable housing development with a mix of single-family homes and townhouses.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Lyon County Commissioner Bob Hastings attended the event at a model home hosted by CPLC at 236 Glen Vista Drive to celebrate the first phase releasing 10 new houses.

Construction continues on other planned homes at the corner of Glen Vista and Kate Peak Road in the new neighborhood behind the Smith’s Food and Drug shopping center. The development is located on land the CPLC purchased from Nevada Rural Housing Authority in 2016 and includes about 45 single-family homes and townhomes using structural insulated panels to reduce construction time and costs.

The location also makes it easier for new homeowners including Josh Kramer, who said he’d been seeking somewhere more affordable. He works in production at Tesla, has lived in Tahoe for years and Alabama before that, and now looks forward to the chance to be closer to his mother, Alida Kramer, who attended to the event with him. He said he was particularly excited to be able to use U.S. 50 to travel to USA Parkway to go to work.

“I’ve been eyeballing this neighborhood for a long time,” Josh Kramer said. “I’m just happy to be here and part of the Dayton family. This is exciting. … I’m glad to meet the neighbors and meet normal, everyday people.”

Partners on the Gold Country project included Ryder Homes, Coldwell Banker, Carson Home Furnishings and other local businesses.

Cortez Masto, keynote speaker for the event, expressed thanks for the community partnerships that came together to make the project possible.

“We all know have a severe housing shortage in Nevada, and we don’t figure out how to work together, if we don’t figure out how to come together to address the issue, unfortunately, too many of our friends and neighbors are just not going to get into the home that we know that when we have home ownership, it’s a comfort to your family, it’s a stability to your family.”

Hastings said providing affordable housing to give Nevada an economic advantage will benefit Lyon County with immediate effect.

“We need projects like this that are going to allow people to get in at the ground level, smaller homes that are very valuable that aren’t necessarily Section 8 homes or anything like that but are homes that people can get involved in and be a part of the community right off the bat,” he said.