The cottage on the Great Elms property. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

The house at Great Elms has a striking appearance on a sunny fall day, even for a place that, according to recent estimates, needs at least $192,000 worth of repairs.

To one side of the farmhouse towers a white clapboard, slate-roofed barn, which now provides winter storage for the huge sculls of the Bromfield School's crew team. To the other, hardwood trees, mature plantings, and stone walls frame the shady backyard, where a one-time apple storage shed now serves as a one-room apartment. Garden beds—planted long ago and tended since at the will of the tenants—complete the scene that is Great Elms.

The setting appeals well enough to current resident John Larochelle, who has lived at the house on Stow Road for 26 years and rues the relocation likely to come with the Dec. 15 foreclosure auction.

Mortgage holder North Middlesex Savings Bank announced the auction of Great Elms and its companion property, The Inn on Fairbank Street, in October after the owners, Harvard Trust Non-Profit Properties, turned in its keys, saying it could no longer pay to maintain and manage the affordable rental units.

"I will deal with reality, but I would like a place just like it is here," Larochelle said, reacting to news that the house has been repossessed from the group that had owned and managed it as a state-sanctioned, affordable rental property for over 25 years.

"I would like a window to look out of and a porch to sit on," Larochelle said, pointing out his bay window and toward the front yard fence he said he'd helped to build years ago. "I do need a place where I can keep my pets," referring to his cats Golden Boy and Sunshine.

As Larochelle talks, Sunshine naps on a couch while Golden Boy plays outside. A jar of cat treats rests on the trestle table that Larochelle built years ago from a Canadian pine log. Photos of loved ones are displayed on a side table in the tidy, two-room apartment that Larochelle rents for less than $500 per month as an income-qualified resident of the state-certified rental apartment.

A 1990 plaque from the Harvard's Lions Club hangs on the wall, recognizing Larochelle's work with that organization in "reaching out to children in need." Framed certificates recognizing his service in the U.S. Navy in Lebanon during the Vietnam War share the space.

"This has been a nice place for me. I don't want to live in a shoebox," Larochelle said, contemplating the future. "I really hope my service counts here... I think it should," he said, pointing to his certificates of war.

Carolyn Hottle now lives in Oregon but lived in the cottage on the Great Elms property for several years.

"I was really happy to find it," she told the Press in a September phone interview. "The cottage had a whole wall of south-facing windows and cathedral ceilings, which attracted me instantly."

Overall, Hottle said, she enjoyed the tranquil setting.

"I could garden there, so I had a huge perennial garden and a vegetable garden," Hottle said. "…The bird life was amazing."

Still, the age of the property also offered disadvantages. Each spring brought flooding in the basement and a malfunctioning sump pump.

"I would wade in and poke the switch with a stick to start it," she said. The aged windows, which to Hottle's delight flooded the place with light, also made the cottage difficult to heat in the winter, she said.

Hottle expressed dismay that Great Elms might soon end its run as an affordable rental property and wondered about the town's interest in such matters.

"People don't want to think about it because they don't ever want to be in that position themselves," she said, referring to Harvard's scarce accommodations for lower-income renters. "Why can we build a big, new library, yet not get interested in saving this?" asked Hottle, who once worked in the Harvard Public Library.