Valparaiso home buyers may soon be able to take part in a down payment assistance program. The city council Monday agreed to partner with the Fort Wayne Housing Authority to bring the Hoosier Homes Program to Valparaiso. It provides forgivable down payment assistance of up to five percent for those earning up to about $127,000 a year.
Club 720 helps facilitate the program. Founder & CEO Heather Presley-Cowen said the assistance program is designed at the federal level, but local governments have to partner with a housing agency to make it available.
"It is a product that's offered by the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Heather Presley-Cowen told council members. "It is specifically for governments like yourselves to be able to authorize your own down payment assistance that's customized to your community."
It's now up to the Valparaiso Board of Works to consider a cooperation agreement.
There's no cost to the Valparaiso city government, under the current proposal, since the program is designed to be self-funded. But Council President Robert Cotton said the city may decide to work with a nonprofit to develop more housing in the future, if there's a market for it.
"We'll need the schools and architects and builders, developers to maybe develop catalyst sites, where we have identified land, perhaps helped acquire it," Cotton said.
Such an arrangement would follow a model created by Club 720 in Northeast Indiana.
