The land trust has a program to help people of color make a down payment on their house.
By Sadie Ensana
A land trust in Vermont has a program to help people of color make a down payment on their house.
For the past two years, over 20 people buying homes for the first time got a big financial boost.
They were part of a program through Champlain Housing Trust that offers a $25,000 forgivable loan.
That’s for buyers who make below the median income and identify as Black or as a person of color.
Michael Monte, CEO of Champlain Housing Trust, said: “We did it as a way of essentially balancing off the sort of years of racial discrimination that has occurred in housing and homeownership for decades.”
Now the program is expanding statewide, after Champlain Housing Trust received a $20 million gift from the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The organization is working with nine other affordable housing groups to offer these forgivable loans.
“So that $25,000 additional down payment assistance was available just initially, just to us because of the grant we got,” Monte said. “And then … we’re making a grant available to the rest of the state to do this.”
Monte said the group has used $1 million of that gift to invest in the homeownership equity program.
“There will be 30 folks who will be taking advantage of this over the next few years,” Monte said.
Sadie Ensana reported this story on assignment from Vermont Public. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.