Prince George's County Employers Help Stabilize Neighborhoods Impacted by Foreclosures Homeowner Education Project Helps Employees Live Near Work
September 30,
2009
Contact:
corprel@freddiemac.com
or (703) 903-3933
McLean, VA – Home prices have dropped, but many working families are still struggling to find affordable homes near their workplace and funds for down payments. Three Prince George's County, Md., employers are assisting employees in becoming homeowners near their offices and helping neighborhoods impacted by foreclosures. There are 3,100 foreclosed properties in Prince George's County.
Dimensions Healthcare System, University of Maryland College Park Campus and the U.S. Census Bureau are providing workplace workshops so employees can be more informed homebuyers who better understand the lending process and Neighborhood Stabilization Programs, which provide down payment and closing cost assistance to eligible homebuyers to purchase vacant foreclosures.
The collaborative project, based on the Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) Workforce Home Benefit employer-assisted housing toolkit, brings together employers, mortgage lenders and housing counseling agencies to provide mortgage information and workshops on purchasing a home, pre-purchase counseling, as well as information on special down payment and closing cost assistance programs such as the County and City of College Park programs.
The Down Payment on Your Dream program offered by Prince George's County provides up to $20,000 of down payment and closing cost assistance to purchase vacant foreclosures in targeted zip codes. Through the Work and Live College Park program, the City of College Park provides up to $35,000 of down payment and closing cost assistance to purchase in the 20740 zip code. Both of these programs stabilize neighborhoods by turning vacant and abandoned foreclosed properties into livable occupied homes in Prince George's County.
Housing Options & Planning Enterprises, Inc., Housing Initiative Partnership, Inc. and Omega Gold Development Group, are HUD-certified housing counseling agencies that will provide the workshops, some of which are based on Freddie Mac's CreditSmart multilingual financial education curriculum. Chase, one of the nation's leading home lenders, will talk to workshop participants about the lending process and present general mortgage options.
Employees responded positively to the workplace homebuyer education workshops held earlier this summer. Dimensions Healthcare System kicked off the initiative in June with 80 people attending an orientation session and ongoing lunch-and-learn workshops. University of Maryland held a series of four workshops in July with 33 attendees and a waitlist for the September workshop. An October workshop was added to meet additional demand. The U.S. Census Bureau kicked off its efforts on Sept. 2.
By implementing a Workforce Home Benefit, employers get a new employee recruiting and retention tool; eligible employees become homeowners; and the city gets increased tax revenue, an owner in a previously vacant home and more stable neighborhoods.
In Prince George's County, the University of Maryland employs 13,248 people; the U.S. Census Bureau employs 4,158 individuals; and Dimensions Healthcare Systems employs 2,500 people.
Freddie Mac was established by Congress in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the nation's residential mortgage markets. Freddie Mac supports communities across the nation by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Over the years, Freddie Mac has made home possible for one in six homebuyers and more than five million renters.
QUOTES
"We're excited to participate in an initiative that helps future homeowners understand the home buying process so they know when they are ready to apply for a mortgage, the types of mortgage products available, as well as the long-term financial commitment of homeownership," said Dwight Robinson, senior vice president of corporate relations and housing outreach for Freddie Mac.
"We received very good feedback from our employees at Dimensions Healthcare System who attended the workshops facilitated by Housing Options & Planning enterprises, Inc. (H.O.P.E.) and Chase. Many expressed that they needed a program like this to help them navigate the buying process and also learn what they needed to do to get in a financial position to buy a home. The response was so great, that we will host another series of workshops later this fall," said Linda Currie, senior benefits analyst, Dimensions Healthcare System.
"This homebuyer education workshop series is convenient for Census employees to attend, easily understood, and enables the employees to be able to make intelligent decisions," said
Theodore A. Johnson, associate director for administration and chief financial officer, U.S. Census Bureau.
"We are thrilled to be partnering with Freddie Mac and the Housing Initiative Partnership to provide homeownership workshops for the local workforce," said Amy Neugebauer, executive director of the College Park City-University Partnership. "This partnership helps qualify participants for our Work & Live College Park program, a Neighborhood Stabilization Program which incentivizes the local workforce to purchase foreclosed homes in the City of College Park. The Work & Live College Park program is a partnership between the College Park City-University Partnership and the College Park Housing Authority."
"This initiative aligns well with our goal of providing homebuyer education to help consumers attain and sustain homeownership," said Donna Miller, national executive of multicultural and affordable lending at Chase. "We look forward to working with Freddie Mac and the other partners, and reaching out to consumers."
"The enthusiastic response to our "Work & Live College Park" homebuyer workshops is a testament to the overwhelming success of the Workforce Home Benefit initiative," said Mary Hunter, director of the housing counseling program at Housing Initiative Partnership. "Homebuyers are eager to take advantage of the incentives available to purchasers of foreclosed properties, and we are pleased to provide the education necessary to help them achieve and sustain their dream of homeownership."
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