| Reviving hopes, communities (StarTribune) |
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Desiree Sawyer gushes about her appliances: the gas stove, the refrigerator -- with ice maker -- and the washer and dryer in the upstairs bathroom. She wouldn't have any of them if it weren't for the aid of local housing agencies that helped her and her husband buy their first house. Those agencies got some help themselves Tuesday when a $16 million pool of money was made available to them. The Home Prosperity Fund will be divvied up among nonprofit organizations in the metro area to help first-time home buyers and to revitalize neighborhoods hit with foreclosures and that have vacant buildings. The goal is to have $50 million in the fund by 2012. The mortgage foreclosure epidemic is a national problem with local effects, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said. It's a problem that can't be solved by one government or organization, either. "We can fix this problem; we can work on it," Coleman said. TCF Bank, Thrivent Financial, US Bank and Wells Fargo contributed $6 million in long-term, low-interest loans to the pool, which is administered by the Family Housing Fund, a nonprofit group that works to ensure affordable housing in the metropolitan area. Minnesota Housing Finance Agency contributed $10 million. The agencies receiving money from the fund are Dayton's Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services, Greater Metropolitan Housing Corporation, Home Ownership Made Easy Program and Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. They will use the money to provide loans, to purchase and repair vacant buildings, and to buy land in the suburbs for future affordable housing projects. Double or triple the trouble The foreclosure crisis must be addressed aggressively, said Tim Marx, commissioner of Minnesota Housing. The number of foreclosures in the state jumped from 6,500 in 2005 to 20,000 in 2007, said Tom Fulton, president of the Family Housing Fund. About 1,600 vacant buildings have been registered in St. Paul, nearly three times the number from 2006. Minneapolis has more than 700 vacant properties, about double the number from 2006. The vast majority are because of foreclosures. Officials don't expect either trend to stop soon. The effect of one house left vacant by foreclosure ripples through an entire neighborhood, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said. "Thousands of foreclosures in the center of our cities are a crisis beyond the level that we've been used to dealing with in this area," he said. "Foreclosure is far and away the biggest issue that we face." Fulton called the fund a new tool to help neighborhoods recover and get good owners into good homes. Target market for money Sawyer, who moved into her St. Paul house at the end of December, didn't receive any money from the new fund, but she's the type of person the money is for: A hard worker who is excited about taking on the responsibilities of owning a home. She got considerable help through city programs and the Dayton's Bluff organization. Before finding out about the resources, she looked at owning a house as a distant goal. She was looking at interest rates from 8 to 10 percent, but was able to get a loan at 6.7 percent. She has deferred low- or no-interest loans that keep her monthly payment below $1,000. Without the aid, she said, she would be paying more than $1,600 a month -- an amount that she and her husband, Tyree Sawyer, couldn't afford.
"We're very blessed," she said while giving a tour of her two-story, four-bedroom house. |
