Program helps low-income home buyers

Advertiser Staff and News Services

First-time, low-income Hawai'i homeowners are now eligible for grants up to $10,000, or 6 percent of a home's purchase price, whichever is greater, under the American Dream Downpayment Initiative program announced yesterday by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Applicants must have incomes not exceeding 80 percent of the area's median income.

HUD will distribute more than $161 million to state and local agencies as part of the program. Supporters say the program could help up to 40,000 low-income families nationwide.

The money also can be used to rehabilitate the property.

"These dollars will help first-time home buyers with the single-greatest obstacle to homeownership," HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said at news conference with several congressional Republicans.

Jackson said the program may especially help more minorities become homeowners. Almost 69 percent of U.S. residents own their homes.

For the first time, the homeownership rate for all minorities is just more than 50 percent, Jackson noted. Specifically, just less than 50 percent of blacks and Hispanics own their homes. The rate for whites is more than 75 percent.

President Bush, who signed the program into law in December, has said he wants to add 5.5 million new minority homeowners by the end of the decade.

HUD notified local agencies yesterday about how much money they were receiving.

In Hawai'i, contact: the City and County of Honolulu: Dan Tully at 527-5907. County of Maui: Wayde Oshiro at 270-7351. County of Kaua'i: Gary Mackler at 241-6867. County of Hawai'i: Edwin Taira at 961-8379.