Calistoga has not built a reasonably priced neighborhood of new homes since the early 1990s, when the Palisades neighborhood was completed that provided for 50% of the homes to be affordable to moderate income families.

Prices have increased dramatically up until the last year, when the "housing bubble" burst nationally, slowing the market for home sales and lowering prices in many locales. Even so, Calistoga average home prices are still far higher than when CAH was formed in 2001 to help combat the lack of affordability. Median pricing then was less than $402,000 (up from $285,000 in 1997), went as high as an estimated $800,000 in 2006, and since then has only declined about 10% to an estimated $720,000 currently.

Not only have house prices stayed out of reach for most, but very few houses have been built in the face of an ever-increasing need. The Solage Resort alone has created an estimated 180 new jobs in Calistoga, yet only a few new houses have been built for sale in the last five years and they are unaffordable to most Solage employees. The 24-unit work force housing recently started next door to Solage (the only apartments to be built in the last 15 years) only meets a fraction of the need.

None of the houses built for sale in the last decade have been affordable to moderate-income homebuyers ($61,500-$95,500 annual income for a family of four). Eighteen homes for low-income families were created in Saratoga Manor, but the balance of new for-sale homes have all been priced in the $700,000-$800,000 range that is out of reach for most buyers.

Cottage Glen will create six or seven new homes that will be affordable to moderate-income homebuyers, as well as twenty-one for low-income families. Even the three or four market-rate houses are expected to be priced below other for-sale housing built in the last few years.