Williamstown Housing Trust Awards Second Homebuyer GrantBy Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
03:44AM / Wednesday, March 04, 2015 | |
 Affordable Housing Trust board members Stanley Parese, left, and Richard DeMayo. The trustees discussed the parameters of their Mortgage Assistance Program as they voted to award a second grant. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town's Affordable Housing Trust has awarded the second $15,000 grant under its Mortgage Assistance Program.
The program, created last year, seeks to help income qualified first-time homebuyers, people who have been displaced by the loss of a job and former residents of the Spruces Mobile Home Park.
The grant can be used for a variety of purposesto help lower the cost of homeownership.
"This grant will allow the borrower to obtain financing without paying private mortgage insurance," Trustee Stanley Parese said before the board voted on the application last week. "PMI is an ongoing several-year expense that the borrower would have to pay. This will enable this first-time homebuyer to avoid that ongoing expense.
All four of the trustees in attendance at the meeting voted in favor of the grant, but only after the board discussed whether it needs to narrow the parameters of the program.
Trustee Craig Clemow expressed concern that the program could conceivably be used by homebuyers who have low income but significant wealth and asked if the trust receives any information about whether applicants could afford a home "but for" the grant.
"I'd hate us to be at a point where we don't have the full amount [to give]," Clemow said, referring to the trust's finite treasury, which has been built with funds from the town's Community Preservation Act property tax surcharge.
"We're basically saying if someone came in as a first-time homebuyer and had a million dollars ...?"
Parese said the trust's intention was to examine and possibly tweak the program once it started receiving applications.
"You could conceivably have someone with millions of dollars and very little income, but we have not sweated that point because most people with great wealth also have capital gains," Parese said. "The question also came up [during the program's creation] about the magnitude of the house. We wondered if we should say you can't buy a $4 million house with the grant.
"One of the things we resolved to do is refine the program as we experience it."
In other business, Parese reported that the trust's request for for proposals for a partner on the acquisition of a building lot would be posted on the commonwealth's Central Register on March 4 with a reply date of April 17.
The trust has discussed partnering with Habitat for Humanity or another non-profit to acquire a lot in town for the purpose of building a home that would be sold to a qualified buyer and deed-restricted to keep it affordable in perpetuity.
Clarification: A "correction" had been added to this report about who was not eligible for the grant. Initially, Spruces residents had been deemed ineligible but the trustees changed the guidelines last fall. That information had not been been communicated to the town for updating on the Williamstown website. We have removed the correction because the original story is correct.
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