Rhode Island is made up of various cities, towns, and villages. But uniting them is a network of organizations improving neighborhoods through a simple concept: home ownership.
The group is The Housing Network — an organization of more than 20 nonprofits. And statewide, its groups are getting people into their first homes. They do it in a number of ways. Home buyer classes, down payment assistance, and home construction are among them.
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All the techniques seek to give people who thought they would never own a home a chance.
“Housing is a right, not a privilege.” This bumper sticker is stuck to the wall by the desk of Anne Berman, director of project development at Church Community Housing Corp. in Newport. But while housing may be a right, owning a house is not. Many of the people who come to Church Community grew up on Aquidneck Island but cannot afford to buy a house there, Berman said.
To help solve this problem, Church Community established a land trust in which the corporation buys house lots, builds or restores houses on them, and sells the home while keeping the land. This enables it to sell houses for their appraised value, minus the cost of the lot. To be eligible, the buyer must make no more than 80 percent of the median income of the area. For a single person in Newport County, that’s $26,700.
The corporation is subsidized with federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds. Buyers typically get their mortgages through banks that have partnered with Church Community. Besides income requirements, buyers must take a home buyer’s class — offered by the Network — to be eligible. While part of the program deals with home maintenance, documents signed at closing, and budgeting, another is discovering whether the student is ready to become a home owner. That means evaluating his or her financial situation — income, debt, expenses, and savings. Those with too much debt or too little put away receive help in creating a budget that, if followed, will put them into a position to qualify for a mortgage, Berman said. But doing this takes more than a budget. For many, it also means changing their spending habits. For that and other reasons, half of those who enroll in the classes quit, she said.
“The attrition rate in these classes is huge — huge,” Berman said. But she added: “If you’re willing to stick it out, we’re willing to stick it out with you.”
Some Network groups have a national scope. Habitat for Humanity, located in South County, Kent County and Providence, is an example. Habitat is a Christian-based volunteer group that builds houses for income-eligible buyers. Since there are no labor costs, Habitat is able to sell three-bedroom homes for as low as $52,000, said Diane Vendetti, volunteer coordinator for the South County office, located in Kingston.
Volunteers come from churches, Habitat for Humanity chapters at schools and colleges, and volunteers at large. Work crews — supervised by project managers — work on the houses Wednesdays and Saturdays. The groups work on an eight-week construction schedule, Vendetti said.
“No experience is needed, just a willingness to learn,” she said, when asked about what qualifications volunteers need. “Although naturally we do welcome people who have experience.”
Buyers must log 500 service hours before buying a home, Vendetti added.
Habitat also serves as their bank, providing buyers with 25 to 30-year mortgages that are repaid without interest, she said. Habitat, like every other nonprofit in the group, uses the Network for technical and financial support. That was the reason the groups decided to unite in 1994, said Brenda Clement, executive director of The Housing Network and former president of the Pawtucket Citizens Development Corp.
Clement said the Network coordinates scheduling for home buyer classes, offers workshops for members, and provides grant funds on a competitive basis to groups with proposals to complete housing projects. It also has a down payment assistance program for first-time home buyers, who may receive up to $7,500 in assistance after completing their buyer training course.
The Network receives funding from the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corp., a quasi-state agency that works to provide housing development funds to nonprofit groups.
For example, groups within the network are now competing for a share of $120,000 worth of funds, Clement said. Six organizations will receive funds, based on the strength of their applications. Payments are doled out quarterly, and projects are to be completed in within a year to 15 months, she said.
“As a housing developers we want to see production,” Clement said.
Many Network groups focus on reviving dying neighborhoods. Stop Wasting Abandoned Property (SWAP) is a Providence group that works on the city’s south side. For example, a little over five years ago it acquired six properties on Gallup Street, knocked down two of them and fixed up the remaining four, each of which gained larger backyards in the process.
SWAP gets money through a variety of sources, including construction loans from area banks and federal HUD moneys distributed through the city, said Adam Namzoff, deputy director of SWAP.
At the city’s other end, The Smith Hill Community Development Corp., formed in 1992 by citizens looking to bring their neighborhood back, is doing similar work. Like other nonprofits, the group rehabilitates old
houses and sells them again. About 80 percent of Smith Hill residents are renters now, said Aime Brissette, the corporation’s executive director. The corporation also offers home buyer classes, he said.
Brissette noted that home buyers who complete their course and go on to purchase a house may still come back to get answers to their questions.
“They can come back to us,” he said. “We do as much with them as they need.”
