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| HUD No.
01-068 (202) 708-0685 http://www.hud.gov/news/index.cfm |
FOR RELEASE Tuesday July 17, 2001 |
HUD will sell approximately 300 homes within five DC zip codes to the Church Association for Community Service (CACS) at discounts up to 50 percent. CACS will rehabilitate the homes and sell them to families, in many cases at below-market prices.
"This is exactly what President Bush means when he points to faith that works," HUD Secretary Mel Martinez said. "This agreement is a powerful demonstration of a partnership that will not only put 300 families into homes, but will also breathe new life into these neighborhoods."
"I'm pleased that we have partnered to build and sustain healthy neighborhoods," DC Mayor Anthony Williams said. "The cornerstone of safe, stable neighborhoods is good housing."
To date, HUD has sold 24 homes to CACS and targeted another 124 homes to. be sold to the faithbased organization. After it renovates the properties, CACS will market and sell them to eligible homebuyers through its network of more than 60 DC churches. The total appraised value of the homes involved in this agreement exceeds $14 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, HUD will sell FHA-foreclosed properties within five designated "revitalization zones" to CACS at a deep discount in order to help provide for renovation costs. In addition, CACS gets a zero interest grace period for three months to begin the process of renovation and sale of the property. Rehabilitation of a property must take place within six months of CACS taking possession of the property. The following zip codes are covered by this agreement: 20001, 20002, 20011, 20019 and 20032 (see attached map).
"This agreement demonstrates how the faith community and government can work together to improve our neighborhoods and the quality of life for our citizens," Reverend Frank Tucker, CACS chairman and chief executive officer said.HUD has similar agreements in 15 other communities around the country, including: San Bernardino, CA; Miami-Dade, FL; Rochester, NY; Chicago, IL; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Cleveland, OH; Reading, PA; Burlington, VT; Denver, CO; Los Angeles, CA; Rhode Island Housing Authority; Hartford/Manchester, CT; Bridgeport, CT; Prince Georges County, MD; and, Harvey, IL.
| Media
Relations 8200 Jones Branch Drive McLean, VA 22102 |
JULY 17, 2001 CONTACT: BRAD GERMAN 703-903-2437 |
HUD SECRETARY MARTINEZ, MAYOR WILLIAMS, CHURCH ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNITY SERVICES, FREDDIE MAC AND LOCAL GROUPS LAUNCH "BUILDING A BETTER COMMUNITY" TO REBUILD DC NEIGHBORHOODS
Freddie Mac's "Summer Of Homeownership " Takes Aim At Abandoned Houses In The Nation's Capital
WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez and Washington, DC Mayor Anthony Williams today applauded the launch of Building a Better Community, a new effort to rehabilitate as many as 300 empty foreclosed houses in Washington, DC.The Church Association for Community Services (CACS), a faith-based organization, is implementing the Building a Better Community project through an innovative collaboration with HUD, the District of Columbia, Freddie Mac, The DC Housing Finance Agency, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Adams National Bank, SunTrust Mortgage and several local non-profit organizations.
"This is what partnership is all about," said HUD Secretary Mel Martinez. "By tapping into the energy of the faith community, we're saving houses and giving homes to hundreds of families looking for their American dream."
"I'm pleased that we have partnered to build and sustain healthy neighborhoods," Mayor Williams said. "The cornerstone of safe, stable neighborhoods is good housing. We're committed to protecting affordable housing and reducing displacement, converting vacant buildings into new housing, and building new housing for people of all incomes."
CACS has already acquired and begun renovations on 24 properties in different neighborhoods through an asset control area agreement with HUD. HUD has earmarked an additional 124 properties for rehabilitation through the program. CACS will receive additional properties at discounts up to 50 percent as they become available. The DC Department of Housing and Community Development has also agreed to allow CACS to obtain the vacant houses it owns that are near the HUD properties. After the repairs are complete, CACS will market and sell the homes to low- and moderate-income families through its network of over 60 churches in the District of Columbia.
"Freddie Mac is delighted to work with Secretary Martinez, Mayor Williams and CACS to increase homeownership opportunities in our nation," said Leland C. Brendsel, Chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac. "The Building a Better Community Initiative will help reinvigorate our neighborhoods by replacing vacant properties with attractive and affordable homes."
HomeSteps, Freddie Mac's real-estate owned sales unit, will provide asset disposition expertise and undertake and oversee the repairs on many of the properties. This will help reduce the Building a Better Community's program costs and enable CACS to reach more families.
"The CACS Building a Better Community program is designed to repair our communities by repairing the empty and abandoned homes that do so much to damage them," says Reverend Frank D. Tucker, chairman of CACS and chairman of the First Baptist Church in Washington, DC. "This is a program with a big vision. We are fortunate to work closely with Mayor Williams, HUD, Freddie Mac, and the other partners who are coming together to provide our families with this outstanding opportunity to build upstanding communities."
"Building a Better Community Is Key to the Summer of Homeownership "
Part of Freddie Mac's "Summer of Homeownership", the CACS Building a Better Community effort will stimulate homeownership and economic growth in key neighborhoods across the District of Columbia. Freddie Mac's "Summer of Homeownership" is a focused, nationwide effort to pioneer new products, initiatives, and technology that will help expand homeownership opportunities to an additional 250,000 to 400,000 families a year."As part of our Summer of Homeownership, Building a Better Community marks a watershed in the renewal of America's urban neighborhoods," said Tom Walsh, vice president of HomeSteps at Freddie Mac. "This is a cohesive and well-integrated effort to transform empty houses into attractive homeownership opportunities. We applaud Secretary Martinez, Mayor Williams, Reverend Frank D. Tucker of CACS, and the other partners for having the vision and the commitment to make CACS Building a Better Community a reality."
Thanks to Freddie Mac's commitment, families can buy homes with conventional mortgages that require as little as $1,000 or 2 percent of the sale price coming from their personal funds. Borrowers can cover the rest of the mandatory 3 percent down payment through grants, gifts, unsecured loans, or Individual Development Accounts.
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Adams National Bank, SunTrust Mortgage and the DC Housing Finance Agency will provide affordable mortgage financing for qualified borrowers. Freddie Mac has committed to purchase the mortgages made to buyers under the new program in order to ensure a continuous supply of mortgage funds for additional homebuyers.
The CACS Building a Better Community initiative is the latest Freddie Mac effort in Washington, DC. During the past five years, Freddie Mac has financed more than $20 billion in mortgages, financing 144,459 homes in the National Capital area.
Washington, D. C. Providing Homebuyer Counseling, Assistance
To help more families take advantage of the CACS Building a Better Community program, the DC Housing Finance Agency, the Greater Washington Urban League, and HomeFree USA are providing pre- and post-purchase homeownership counseling."This program is an exciting concept and solution to a problem that has plagued the District for many years. Rehabbing and selling these distressed properties to low-to moderate income families would help strengthen neighborhoods through the City," said Zoreana Barnes, acting director of the DC Housing Finance Agency. "We look forward to assisting the Mayor, CACS, Freddie Mac and the other housing partners in this new endeavor."
The DC Department of Housing and Community Development will provide down payment assistance to qualified families through the Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP) administered by the Greater Washington Urban League. The HPAP provides down payment and closing costs assistance in the form of settlement loans to very low-, low-and moderate-income first time homebuyers for the purchase of single-family homes, condominiums and cooperative apartments. For more information, interested families should call CACS at 202-625-8367.
Freddie Mac is a stockholder-owned corporation chartered by Congress in 1970 to create a continuous flow of funds to mortgage lenders. By supplying lenders with the money to make mortgages and packaging the mortgages into marketable securities, Freddie Mac sustains a stable mortgage credit system and reduces the mortgage rates paid by homebuyers. Over the years, Freddie Mac has opened the doors for one in six homebuyers in America and two million renters. (More information on Freddie Mac can be found on the company's web site located at http://www.freddiemac.com.)Back to top of page
| Dr. Dorothy
I. Height Vice President |
The Honorable Walter
E. Fauntroy President |
The
Honorable Mervyn M. Dymally Secretary |
| Joseph E.
Madison Treasurer |
MEMORANDUM | Eulas
Dortch Assistant Treasurer |
To: The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
From: The Honorable Walter E. Fauntroy, Retired Member of Congress (1971-1991)
Re: A Faith-based Initiative to Provide Affordable Housing For Low and Low-moderate Income Citizens in the District Of ColumbiaDate: March 31, 2000
The problem of the rapidly shrinking stock of affordable housing for low and low-moderate income citizens in our nation has come to be reflected most acutely in the experiences of the citizens of the District of Columbia, our nation's capital, In an effort. to retain what is left of a rapidly disappearing stock of land and housing in our city and to make it available to low income citizens who are presently being driven out of the city, the Church Association For Community Services (CACS), a faith-based association of more than 100 churches here, desires to implement a demonstration project that would coordinate and concentrate all available federal, state and local programs to address this problem in the District of Columbia. We believe that the success of the project that we have in mind will model a process that will help low income families that are being driven out of inner city communities all over the nation by well-known economic forces that have come into play.
Your last State of The Cities Report has carefully documented the dimensions of this problem in the nation. I need not remind you that, despite six years of unprecedented economic growth in our country, a large and growing number of our families - millions of them - are still struggling to secure decent, affordable housing. As your publication, last March, WAITING IN VAIN: an update on AMERICA'S rental housing crisis points out, "Rather than benefit from the surging economy, low-income renters are left to compete for the dwindling supply of affordable rental housing available on the private market." Both the economic boom and the pattern of metropolitan development have created a crisis of housing affordability and a "jobs/housing mismatch." As your State of the Cities Report indicates, crisis rent levels alone have swelled the number of households with worst case housing needs to 5.3 million families and more than 13 million people.
Nowhere is that crisis more acutely reflected than right here in the nation's capital where in the last two years our Section 8 waiting list has increased by 29%, our public housing waiting list by 24% and where time on our waiting lists for both Section 8 and public housing is up to five (5) years. The national average for waiting time on those lists is eleven months. You can rest assured that a disproportionate number of those adversely affected by the forces at work are right here in Washington, D.C.
To your credit and that of President Clinton and Vice President Gore, you have crafted a number of federal housing initiatives like Hope VI, the latest version of the program that Representative Jack Kemp and I put together when I was a member of the Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. My twenty (20) years on that committee have given me great appreciation for so many of the programs that you have put in place on your watch: the Home Ownership Zones; Section 8 Homeownership Vouchers legislation; the PATH initiative; HOME and the Low-income Housing Tax Credit; your Section 8 Rental Assistance for Needy Families initiative; the Continuum-of-Care Homeless Assistance program; your Welfare-To-Work Housing Vouchers program; your various enhancements of the Section 202 Housing for the Elderly Program and, finally, your recently announced Teachers Next Door funding initiative.
We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again
The faith-based community's effort to see that such housing initiatives are effectively coordinated and concentrated in today's District of Columbia may be understood best against the background of a demonstration which we were privileged to carry out here in our nation's capital back in the 1960's with the guidance and considerable help of the then newly established Cabinet level Department of Housing and Urban Development and its first Secretary, the Honorable Robert Weaver. It was called the Shaw Urban Renewal Project: renewal With,, By and For the people affected by economic forces that were displacing, at that time, low and low-moderate income housing stock in the inner city. That initiative resulted in a very creative partnership between our faith-based institutions and both the public and private sectors in our nation's capital to produce and preserve thousands of units of housing for low and moderate people in the heart of our inner city.
The Church Association For Community Services (CACS) wishes to replicate that demonstration project, but this time focused upon identifying housing stock and land presently held by the federal and local agencies in all fifteen of the areas of the city which have been designated to be Enterprise Zones. We want then to make that housing stock and land available to low and moderate income citizens. To that end, we envision involving in our proposed partnership with HUD, such institutions as Fannie Mae,, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and a host of other private sector foundations and institutions that have relevance to the task at hand.
I have attached herewith a booklet on the background for what we want to do together with a first draft of what resources we think that we will require to launch this undertaking. I shall be meeting today with your very able Federal Housing Commissioner, Assistant Secretary William C. Apgar, to get his very valuable input on our proposal. Joining me at that meeting will be CACS Chairman, Dr. Frank D. Tucker, Mr. Robert L. Moore, Mr. H.R. Crawford,, Mr. Timothy L. Jenkins and Mr. Solomon Majid. After we shall have discussed the concept with him in great detail, I respectfully request an opportunity to meet with you some time next week to determine whether we can in fact undertake this demonstration project together, beginning as soon as is possible. Given the forces at work in the city today, time is of the essence.
| Dr. Dorothy
I. Height Vice President |
The Honorable Walter
E. Fauntroy President |
The
Honorable Mervyn M. Dymally Secretary |
| Joseph E.
Madison Treasurer |
MEMORANDUM | Eulas
Dortch Assistant Treasurer |
To: The Honorable William C. Apgar, Assistant Secretary for Housing, Federal Housing Commissioner, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
From: The Honorable Walter E. Fauntroy
Re: A Faith-based Initiative to Provide Affordable Housing For Low and Low-moderate Income Citizens in the District Of ColumbiaDate: March 31, 2000
We thank you for granting us this opportunity to meet with you, preparatory to a meeting we look forward to having with Secretary Cuomo on the subject of the memorandum we are sending to him today. As you have seen from that memorandum, we are interested in putting together with HUD and the Clinton Administration a demonstration project of what can be done about to address the problem of the rapidly shrinking stock of affordable housing for low and moderate income families in our nation generally and our nation's capital in particular.
We have modeled the demonstration after one which the faith community of the District of Columbia fashioned and carried out during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations that demonstrated in a classic way the ability of a public/private partnership to reclaim, rebuild and, in many instances, build anew affordable housing for low and moderate income residents of our inner city. It involved the coordination and concentration of all available federal resources - in housing construction, job training, health, recreation, welfare, education, transportation and municipal services - to improve both physical and social conditions for the people who lived and worked in what is now known as the Shaw Urban Renewal Area.
On April 14, 2000, Mayor Anthony A. Williams of the District is convening a Faith-based Conference on Neighborhood Revitalization and Economic Development. At that time we want to present him with what we think can and should be done. As you have noted from the memorandum to Secretary Cuomo, we have in mind integrating a whole range of housing programs in an effort to provide affordable housing: the Home Ownership Zones; Section 8 Homeownership Vouchers legislation; the PATH initiative; HOME and the Low-income Housing Tax Credit; your Section 8 Rental Assistance for Needy Families initiative; the Continuum-of-Care Homeless Assistance program; your Welfare-To-Work Housing Vouchers program; your various enhancements of the Section 202 Housing for the Elderly Program and your recently announced Teachers Next Door funding initiative.
Key to our ability to put this altogether at this time is a piece of legislation that I tried often to get our House Banking Committee to authorize during my twenty year tenure there. It finally became law in 1998, thanks to the cooperation of the current Chairman of the Committee, my good friend Jim Leach. It is the Asset Control Area Partnership Program. The legislation instructs FHA and HUD to create partnerships with local governments and "nonprofit community development organizations" to facilitate the acquisition, rehabilitation and re-sale of FHA Real Estate Owned (REO) properties to owner occupants.
That is precisely what we want to propose to HUD and the Mayor on April 14th : a partnership between HUD, our local government and the Church Association for Community Services (CACS) to acquire, rehabilitate and re-sell, among other properties, FHA REO properties. This, we believe, fits perfectly into a comprehensive effort that the Mayor wishes to make at Neighborhood Revitalization and Economic Development.
Specific features of the program are particularly attractive to us:
The three distinct classes of discounts allowable under the program: minimal, at 10 percent for requiring less than $5,000 in repairs; 30% for properties requiring between $5,000 and $15,000 in repairs; and a deep discount of 50% for properties requiring more than $15,000 in repairs (MSP).
The Participation Agency must plan to invest public funds in the Asset Control Areas in an amount at-least equal to the entire discount invested by HUD. That assures us that District government would be obligated to contribute to the comprehensive neighborhood development that we seek that would enhance the housing opportunities for low and moderate income families that we seek to retain in the city. The District government could include, therefore, its match the both the economic development and social service investments that we want to include in our Asset Control Areas.
The staff of the CACS nonprofit community development organization that we propose as the D.C. Government and HUD's partner in this demonstration project would welcome having the responsible for performing the appraisal services required by the legislation.
The Bridge Acquisition Financing features of the legislation which would make available to the people we want to house the entire amount of the acquisition price at zero percent interest for a period of up to 90 days is also very attractive to us.
In short, Mr. Secretary, what we want you to help us persuade Secretary Cuomo to do with us is to participate in a win-win situation. The most vulnerable of our citizens win affordable housing; HUD wins by demonstrating its ability to effectively coordinate and concentrate all available federal programs aimed at neighborhood revitalization right here in the District of Columbia where the decision makers can see and feel and touch it; and the Faith Community wins by carrying out its primary mission: that of "declaring good news" to the poor by "binding up the broken hearted and setting at liberty them that are bound."
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