Last Night's HPAP Meeting: Money for Your Home

• March 5th 2009

by Mark Wellborn

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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.