Low- and moderate-income Hollister residents who feel locked out
of the housing market have another funding option with the
redevelopment agency’s announcement that its downpayment assistance
program has been extended for another year.
Low- and moderate-income Hollister residents who feel locked out of the housing market have another funding option with the redevelopment agency’s announcement that its downpayment assistance program has been extended for another year.
Designed to “mitigate the effects of the foreclosure crisis,” the Hollister Second Program will provide loans of up to $50,000 to help close the funding gap for people seeking their first home.
“It’s accomplishing a major goal of the RDA, which is to help first-time home buyers,” said Bill Chow, the RDA’s program manager.
In a report to the City Council, the RDA noted that Hollister has been “impacted severely” by the foreclosure crisis, with more than 900 local homes in some stage of foreclosure as of late August. The report said that as of the end of last month, 345 homes were bank-owned; 191 were scheduled for trustee sale; and 376 were in the pre-foreclosure process.
Those numbers are expected to worsen, the report notes, due to a high number of mortgages with variable interest rates that are due to reset in the near future, “thus producing an increase in mortgage defaults and eventual foreclosures.”
In a recent foreclosure prevention workshop offered locally, “the public’s concern confirmed the severity of the foreclosure crisis and expedited the need to continue developing a proactive foreclosure prevention strategy,” the RDA report said.
To that end, the City Council – in its capacity as the RDA board – approved the allocation of $500,000 to fund the second mortgage program as it did last year, when 21 applications were received and 10 families received assistance.
See the full story in the Pinnacle on Friday.
