YOUNGSTOWN New coalition helps home buyers in city

The hope is to produce 60 to 80 mortgage-ready home buyers in the city a year.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Help for prospective first-time home buyers has been out there, but not all in one place.
One agency helps repair credit problems. Another helps families budget. Yet another educates on the home buying process.
Not exactly one-stop shopping.
"They had to be a pretty sophisticated consumer," said George Garchar, executive director of Catholic Charities Housing Opportunities.
Not anymore.
New approach
A coalition including Youngstown State University, the city, housing agencies such as Catholic Charities and eight banks has pulled the process together into an initiative called Buy Into Youngstown.
The aim is to create more people who qualify for mortgages and increase homeownership in the city.
"This is a truly collaborative program," said Jim Shanahan, senior research associate at YSU's Center for Urban and Regional Studies. "We're confident people will come out of this with the ability to qualify for a loan, buy a house and maintain it."
Buy Into Youngstown is an outgrowth of the Youngstown 2010 vision for the future.
Who is it for?
The program is for people who want to buy a house in the city and can be ready financially in six to 12 months.
The hope is to produce 60 to 80 mortgage-ready home buyers a year. The program, which started Oct. 1, has eight people enrolled so far.
YSU formed the coalition after it received a federal grant in 2001 that involved housing.
Shanahan said the university saw a number of agencies doing related work and thought they all could do more by working together.
"This goes well beyond what any of these agencies are able to do on their own," he said.
City hall was funding some of those agencies. The city's housing market didn't justify funding them all when each had different strengths and weaknesses, said Jay Williams, director of the city Community Development Agency.
A comprehensive, inclusive program such as Buy Into Youngstown should be the most productive, he said. The city is paying YSU $45,000 to cover administration costs.
"It lets banks do what they do best and those agencies do what they do best," Williams said.
The program is helping first-time home buyers and people who may not have been ready financially for a loan and were denied, said Jamael Brown. He is a community organizer in the urban studies department who is the contact for Buy Into Youngstown.
Other candidates for the program may be people intimidated by working with banks; some have never had a checking or savings account, he said.
Benefits banks, too
The program also helps the banks, said Linda Booker, a community mortgage lender at Sky Bank.
Banks aren't in a position to track customers they've turned down for loans, she said. The program gives banks an outlet to refer customers who fall short of qualifying for loans. Banks then can welcome the program graduates back to apply again and likely receive a mortgage, Booker said.
The program's post-purchase education is important to banks, too, said Richard Shafer, vice president of mortgage loan servicing at Home Savings and Loan.
Banks and homeowners avoid foreclosures when borrowers have a full grasp on their responsibilities, he said.