Continued From Newsletter

The three- and four-bedroom, one- and two-car garage single family homes are valued between $138,000 and $175,000. The homeownership program pre-qualifies potential buyers who then enter a covenant to attend classes on the responsibilities of homeownership, the purchasing process and credit counseling so they are ready to buy when construction on their home is complete. For Rosalind and her husband, Keith, and their 15-year-old daughter, Rokeise, the process took about three years.

“The best thing about the classes is they teach you how you can save money, how you can have money for your mortgage and then have money to enjoy. They teach you how to budget,” Lynch said.

Participants in the program are Glades residents who are first time home buyers. Clients and employees of NOAH have taken advantage of the program. Lynch, for example, works at NOAH’s Mary Alice Fortin Family Development Center, and at least two of the new homeowners lived in NOAH apartments. But the program is open to all residents of the Glades whose families earn 80 percent or less than the area median income for Palm Beach County, which is $64,400 for a family of four. NOAH is scheduled to build 80 homes, but there are no plans to stop once that number is reached.

”It's a focus that the Board of Directors has set as one of the primary missions of the organization for the next few years – the development of new single family homes,” said Thomas Roberts, NOAH’s Executive Director, who oversees the program. "We're very pleased with the success we've had. The complexities of developing affordable housing in Palm Beach County causes us to move slower than we'd like, but we have been successful, and we will continue to move forward with the program.”

Private homeowners are aware of the paperwork involved in closing on a single home, but that process is multiplied for each homeowner in the NOAH program because multiple financers and government agencies are involved in each transaction. Investors in the program include LISC, Palm Beach County Housing and Community Development, Wachovia Bank, the Community Financing Consortium and the city of Belle Glade.

Return to Newsletter