Last Night's HPAP Meeting: Money for Your Home

• March 5th 2009

by Mark Wellborn

Last night, UrbanTurf headed over to the Adams Morgan offices of Housing Counseling Services, Inc. to hear the latest on the Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP).

Housing Counseling Services is a non-profit organization that provides counseling, training, and technical assistance for low and moderate-income homebuyers, homeowners, and tenants. About 25 people attended the meeting last night that served as both an orientation for those interested in buying a home and an information session about HPAP.

HPAP is a DC initiative that gives up to $40,000 in financial assistance to low and moderate-income individuals to purchase single-family homes, condominiums and apartments. The assistance comes in the form of a no-interest 40-year loan (with no payments for the first five years). The dollar amount used to be $70,000, but effective January 16 that number was lowered to $40,000.

Here are some things that we didn’t (and maybe you didn’t) know that we learned last night:

• HPAP participants are required to contribute $500 or 50 percent of their liquid assets over $3,000 (whichever is greater) to the purchase of the home. So, for example, if you have $10,000 in the bank, half of $7,000 (the amount over $3,000) must go toward buying the property. Pensions, IRAs, etc. are not considered liquid assets.

• If you are a single person making $43,050 or less, you can get the full $40,000 assistance that the program offers. That number gradually goes down as income increases. Anyone making over $56,000 a year will get less than $10,000. (The level of assistance also varies depending on how many people live in the household.)

• While the loan can be paid off at any time, monthly loan payments never exceed $90 a month, according to a representative of Housing Counseling Services.

For further info about HPAP, see our past articles here and here.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/last_nights_hpap_meeting_money_for_your_home/620.