Mike, that is where the "Supportive" comes into "Supportive Homeownership". You have training sessions to teach people these skills and how to cope with problems. Poor people, many times, also have worked as laborers, and as such might have more "maintenance" skills than say your average social worker or lawyer. Those skills they don't have are easily trained, heck issue them a license for being a "Certified Home Maintenance Specialist" at the end of the training session. Teach the class using real people's houses. (I hate that, so they can practice on mine. Any other volunteers?)
The cost of emergency repair to an important element of a house, such as a roof or new furnace, is always a potential problem. So my suggestion would be a small amount escrowed in an account for that purpose, (for a limited time). Or a fund set up for such a purpose that is paid into each month by a number of people in the program. Sort of like insurance without the profit to shareholders built in. Payments on a $125,000 house today (thirty year loan) without down payment is $709 per month. Almost exactly what Hennepin County pays for a mat on the floor? Take the subsidy for a four bedroom apartment and subtract this amount and you still have several hundred dollars for insurance, heat, a hundred dollars a month for the emergency repairs escrow, and still save money for the County, State, etc. (The payment amount is not subisition, it is a direct quote made by a mortgage company today) Strange isn't it? You can give a family a house, and stabilize several lives, for less than the amount to keep them in poverty. As an investment it also looks great. Look at the increased tax revenue that each of the children will put into the system over their lives. Look at just the savings on social services over the lives of each member of the family, let alone social costs for additional policing and trips to the emergency room at Hennepin County Medical Center. Think of the savings at detox, at area clinics, etc. Gosh maaaaaybe we should rebate even more. Buy them a more expensive house where the kids could get an even better education and make even more tax money for the State? Well lets not get carried away. Lets just say we can be caring enough to actually help people out of poverty, and have it cost less than it would have cost anyway to keep them in poverty. The only losers would be the poverty industry that has grown up around providing "services" and very expensive subsidized rental "affordable housing" in large apartment complexes. Like the Asbestos Industry the Poverty Industry needs to go away. It may have seemed like a beneficial thing at first, but now we know it is BAD for people and eventually costs society too much. Jim Graham, Ventura Village > "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing."< - Benjamin Franklin _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
