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ATHENS AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY
T his is not your typical story about
home foreclosures. This one has a
happy ending.
Take Jae Troy, who bought a home
with his wife and baby near Bogart.
Despite juggling school expenses???he's gone
back to college to get his degree???and a mod
est family income, the Troy family is able to
make their monthly mortgage payment.
That's because Troy and several hundred
other low-income homeowners in the Athens
area purchased their homes through programs
that aim to get families into their own homes.
And as a result, despite the weak job market
and the expenses that arise as a homeowner,
there are no foreclosures among this group of
otherwise high-risk borrowers.
Troy bought his home through the Athens
Area Habitat for Humanity, but the Athens
Land Trust and the Athens Housing Authority
offer similar programs. While the process
for getting into a home is different for each
organization, the end result is a financially
stable family and fewer foreclosed homes on
the market.
Granted, Athens enjoys a lower foreclosure
rate than most of the state. One of every 834
properties in Clarke County received a fore
closure filing in September, according to the
most recent data compiled by RealtyTrac, a
national real estate forecasting company. (One
in every 529 Oconee County properties entered
foreclosure.) Overall, though, RealtyTrac
ranked Georgia with the sixth-highest fore
closure rate in the country, reporting 1 in 532
properties entering foreclosure.
The very few foreclosures among home-
buyers who go through the Habitat, Land Trust
and AHA programs are not just related to the
low purchase price (homes typically sell for
less than $85,000). It's also a deeper connec
tion to their home and their community that
helps keep families on the right track, experts
say.
"Some programs, they sell a family a
house and it's very hands off," ALT Director
Volunteers work on a Habitat house on Carter Drive.
An Athens Land Trust house in the Hancock corridor neighborhood
of Operations Heather Benham says. "Ours,
we generally consider ourselves partners with
a family from here on out. Because we want
them to be successful, we want the house to
stay good because it's a good asset to the
community and the program to help other
families."
Support from the
Ground Up
At ALT, the organization renovates an
older home or builds a new, energy-efficient
one, then sells it to a family who earn no
more than 80 percent of the area's median
income???for example, $42,750 for a family of
three. Athens First Bank & Trust works with
ALT to secure a mortgage, and if the family
ends up selling the home in the future, they
must sell it back to ALT, so that another low-
income family may have a
shot at an affordable house
(prices range from $60,000
to $95,000).
"My feeling is, one
reason it works is because
we say we'll buy the house
back," Benham says, "So,
on the front end, as a
developer, we try to make
something that's worth buying back. Whereas
most times, people are building something to
sell and that's it." The program has completed
18 houses, has another 56 under contract, and
none of their clients have got into foreclosure,
she says.
That same connection to a house is also
the driving force behind Habitat for Humanity.
When a homeowner volunteers 500 hours to
build someone else's home, then supervises
the construction of their own home, they will
be sure it's done right, Executive Director
Spencer Frye says. "I think you get vested into
this process, through the selection criteria
and the idea that, I would venture to say,
99 percent of homeowners don't even get a
chance to build their own house," he says.
"We assign homeowners as quality control for
their own house."
Families may qualify for the Habitat pro
gram when they earn 60 percent or less of
the local median income, but Frye said many
of their homeowners make far less than that.
"A lot of folks come in at about 35 (percent);
if I see a 40 percent, I'm
excited. We rarely break 50
percent." In Clarke County,
according to Habitat's lat
est guidelines, a family of
three earning 35 percent of
the median income brings
home $18,725 a year.
Habitat has built 76
homes since the Athens
chapter got its charter in 1988, and three
homes since then have changed hands, not
counting a few that were sold due to the
death of a homeowner, Frye says.
Because Habitat self-finances its homes,
it also has more leeway in setting payment
amounts and schedules. Although both Athens
Land Trust and Habitat work with families on
budgeting and payments, being your own bank
adds some flexibility, Frye says. At the same
???I think, sociologically, this
type of affordable housing
model harkens back to
the barn-raising days. It???s
community driven.???
Foreclosing on Foreclosures
Programs Help Low-Income Homeowners
8 FLAGP0LE.COM-JANUARY 9, 2013
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