MHP Connect

Community First: Homes 4 Families and CalVet create community for veterans

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Created: Friday, 20 July 2018 09:41

Written by Laura Proescholdt

"Overall, California is home to more veterans than any other state in the country," explains Mark Walbert of the California Department of Veterans Affairs. "We get up to 400 inquiries per month from vets looking to buy a home."  

Walbert administers CalVet's Residential Enriched Neighborhoods (REN) program, which utilizes the Enriched neighborhoods model. Developed over 12 years by Homes 4 Families and licensed by CalVet, the Enriched Neighborhoods model builds wealth, stability, and thriving communities for low-income veterans and their families through affordable homeownership and wrap-around services. 

Hear from Stacey Chiang, Grant Writer & Corporate Development Associate at Homes 4 Families, and her colleagues about how the Enriched Neighborhood model builds community for veterans and their families.

"CalVet is a great partner, and they're national leaders in community responsiveness," explains Stacey Chiang, Grant Writer & Corporate Development Associate at Homes 4 Families. "They saw the rising numbers of homeless veterans and the rising housing costs in California and quickly took action." 

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Community First: Detroit's Live Midtown program leveraged partnerships to attract employees

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Created: Thursday, 19 July 2018 15:30

Written by Laura Proescholdt

As Detroit emerged from bankruptcy and the Great Recession, locals sought an effective strategy to attract and retain employees of local businesses in the Midtown area, a thriving center for arts, education, and medicine. With rental, homebuyer, and homeowner incentives for employees of three major partner institutions – including Wayne State University, Detroit Medical Center, and Henry Ford Health System – Live Midtown was the anchor strategy among local efforts to revitalize the Midtown area and to attract and retain employees.  

Photo: Historic home in Midtown via Live Midtown

Through subsidies for new residents, $2,500 in rental assistance, $20,000 five-year forgivable loans for down payment assistance, and $5,000 grants for exterior improvement, Live Midtown played a major role in meeting those goals. 

“From 2013 to 2015, Midtown Detroit had recorded its first increase in population in a decade, and this program is responsible for a portion of that," explains Christopher Hughes, Data Manager for Midtown Detroit, Inc., the entity that administered the program. "We had 791 participants, new to the Midtown area. If you account for household size, that’s a little bit over 1,200 new residents from this program alone over a five-year period. That's pretty substantial.” 

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Community First: Baltimore's Vacants to Value turns vacant properties into "assets to the community"

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Created: Thursday, 19 July 2018 14:54

Written by Laura Proescholdt

"How do you bolster neighborhoods by shifting vacant properties into assets to the community?" For Alice Kennedy, Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Housing and Community Development in Baltimore, Maryland, that's the driving question behind the City's Vacants to Value program.

Launched in 2010, Vacants to Value incentivizes redevelopment of abandoned properties by providing applicants with $10,000 toward closing costs and downpayment assistance for the purchase of a formerly vacant home, and allows buyers to build home renovation loans into their mortgage. To qualify for the incentive, the house must have been subject to a Vacant Building Notice for a year or more prior to its rehabilitation for a sale to a home buyer.  

Kennedy says the program strengthens communities by building on existing neighborhood assets. "We're looking at continuing to highlight neighborhoods that often go overlooked," Kennedy explains. "These areas are affordable with strong roots that are attractive to homebuyers. It's important to highlight the amenities that currently exist in those neighborhoods." 

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Community First: Key lessons for housing development and revitalization

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Created: Tuesday, 17 July 2018 09:40

Written by Laura Proescholdt

From focus groups to surveys, to internet analytics and trend research, companies worldwide spend billions on engaging with customers to understand exactly what they want. They don't want to design a product that their target market wouldn't – or couldn't – buy. Neither should designers of homebuyer and homeowner programs.  

Too often, though, programs zero in on housing development goals without explicitly integrating the needs of the community. Failing to connect with the community these programs seek to serve – the customers – can result in completed projects sitting empty for longer than anticipated or a failure to use resources impactfully. 

Community First, a HUD-sponsored guidebook created by Minnesota Housing Partnership with funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, helps you avoid those pitfalls by outlining key considerations in homebuyer / homeowner program design including: 

• understanding your homebuyer market (your customers); 
• identifying and addressing existing barriers to homeownership within your target market; and 
• establishing appropriate programmatic approaches to attract and support buyers to invest in properties in targeted neighborhoods. 

To create this resource, Minnesota Housing Partnership and Econometrica reviewed more than 300 homebuyer / homeowner programs across the United States. In addition to outlining general principles and best practices, the guidebook includes standout program examples that showcase innovative ideas organizations can apply as they look for creative approaches to put community first. 

Read more: Community First: Key lessons for housing development and revitalization