Somewhere in every human being resides the fantasy to own a huge, expensive showcase house – and big-time charities are pouncing all over it.

In California and across the United States it's become a trend to sell $150 tickets that can win a $2 million house – and ring up leftover money for a group doing good deeds.

In San Francisco, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is relentlessly promoting its July 10 raffle of a $2.4 million house near Golden Gate Park. It's happening in the capital region, too, for the first time: a $150 ticket could win you a $1.9 million house in Placer County – while raising funds for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Northern California. In February, a couple from Danville – the husband just laid off – won a $1.2 million house in Marin County with a $150 entry.

What gives? Is this a new way to sell a house in a market where everything above $400,000 is stalled?

Sandra Sims, president of Texas-based Step By Step Fundraising, said she gets questions weekly from "homeowners who want to raffle their house because they're having a hard time making payments." It may be, she said, that some big homes are "distress situations."

That's speculative, of course, and Home Front has no inside knowledge on any of these big raffle homes.

Neal Martin-Zeavy, raffle director for the Placer County residence, said, "A couple members of our extended community in Placer County were in a position to partner with a nonprofit. They've asked us to keep their names anonymous. But they were in a position to make their home available for a raffle, and we're obviously overjoyed."

The raffle is May 30 and the deadline to buy tickets May 15. Martin-Zeavy said, "We've sold tickets in 49 states," with expectations for ticket sales already being exceeded.

So what if you win? How do you pay the taxes? Remember the woman who won a free $250,000 house in Lincoln last month with a $96,000 tax bite? Imagine that on a $2 million house.

"HGTV does a sweepstakes every year for a million-dollar house, and I don't think anyone who's won it has lived in the house for that reason," said Sims.

"If you can't pay the taxes, you have to sell the house, and in this market it's hard to sell."

Said Martin-Zeavy: that's why there's an option of taking $1.5 million in cash.

House or cash. What to do?

"At the end of the day that's a good problem to have," said Martin-Zeavy.

Home Front hasn't entered but is curious to see who wins and how they handle it. And then, which charity and homeowner step up next to try.

State loan program is back

Here's another sign of the lights starting to go back on: The California Housing Finance Agency – CalHFA – is getting back in the game.

The state's affordable housing bank – which shut down key assistance programs for homebuyers in December due to the state's budget standoff – has restarted a key grant to help buyers of new homes pay mandatory school facility fees.

This month it will also bring back its popular 3 percent down payment assistance loans for first-time homebuyers. (Homeowners don't pay back the loan until the house is sold, refinanced or paid off.)

"We're able to do this following last week's sale of general obligation bonds," acting CalHFA Executive Director Steve Spears told affordable housing specialists gathered in the capital Wednesday.

On April 22, the state sold $6.85 billion in bonds that officials said will start 5,000 public works projects. The CalHFA programs being restarted are funded by Proposition 46, a $2.1 billion bond passed by voters in 2002, and Proposition 1C, a $2.85 billion bond passed in 2006 for housing and redevelopment of existing neighborhoods.

Spears said the agency will bring back a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage in the "near future."

"We are tired of being on the sidelines," he said. "We want to be back in the game."

Cohousing lifestyle touted

Nevada City's Charles Durrett, a leading U.S. authority on senior cohousing, has published his newest book introducing the nation to a residential lifestyle he discovered as a student in Denmark in 1980.

The book is "The Senior Cohousing Handbook" published by New Society Publishers of British Columbia. It's an update of the author's 2005 book: "Senior Cohousing."

Durrett, a principal at McCamant and Durrett Architects with his wife, Kathryn, touts a lifestyle of private self-sufficient homes around a common building for meals and special events as an alternative to single-family houses or nursing homes.

As baby boomers swell the senior demographic to 20 percent by 2030, it takes on an added significance.

There's already a senior cohousing project in the capital region: Muir Commons in Davis.

Notably, it's being toured Saturday by members of the Bay Area Community Land Trust, East Bay Cohousing and "people interested in similar alternatives."

The region also has intergenerational cohousing projects, including Southside Park Cohousing in downtown Sacramento and Nevada City Cohousing in Nevada City.

Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.