Program offers financial education

The program helps prospective homeowners with money management skills.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Stephanie, 10, will be able to play her music whenever she wants in her own new room.
Sister Nicole, 11, can't wait to play by herself in her own room, which she wants painted orange and yellow.
Brother Sean, 11, is just looking forward to the quiet new Beachwood Drive neighborhood, away from their old home and the occasional gunshots.
"It's a big opportunity for us," he said.
Today's outlook for the McCollum children and their adoptive parents, Ernie and Virginia, is much different from just a year ago. Then, the family recently had declared bankruptcy and eventually would lose their Republic Avenue home to foreclosure.
On Wednesday, however, they break ground on a new four-bedroom home in a rural setting on the East Side.
The McCollums credit a year of education delivered through the Buy Into Youngstown program for their financial reversal.
"Our dignity was destroyed. We didn't know where to turn," Ernie McCollum said. "We turned in the right direction."
About the program
Buy Into Youngstown is a coalition of agencies that helps prospective home buyers learn a variety of money management skills. The McCollums are the first to complete the program.
The program is for people who want a house in the city and can be ready financially in six to 12 months. The aim is to create more people who qualify for mortgages and increase homeownership in the city.
The program has about 15 families taking classes. Three or four almost are ready to graduate, said Jamael Brown, who coordinates Buy Into Youngstown. He is a community organizer at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at Youngstown State University.
"There are many more McCollums out there ... asking, 'How can I turn around my situation?'" Brown said.
The McCollums were unfortunate candidates.
They needed money to pay for college educations of their two now-adult children in the mid-1990s. Three mortgage companies -- all later charged with fraud for their operations in the Cleveland area -- offered to finance them.
Inexperience, misplaced trust and fraud left them with three mortgages. They owed $100,000 on the modest house they bought for $16,000 in 1979. Combined with credit card debt, they just couldn't make the payments.
McCollum's retirement income as a foreman and a security guard at Delphi Packard Electric Systems and subsidies the family receives from adopting their three children weren't nearly enough.
They'd wanted to live in the Beachwood neighborhood on the East Side but didn't figure it was possible. The builder referred them to agencies involved with Buy Into Youngstown.
Worth the wait
A year of faith, education, sacrifice and saving gave the McCollums a high enough credit score to quality them for a bank loan to build the home.
"They just took the knowledge and ran with it," said Diana Eggleston, housing counselor at Catholic Charities Housing Opportunities.
Buy Into Youngstown will be there after the McCollums move in, too, expected by Christmastime. Counselors will work with the family to make sure they remain on a feasible financial course, Eggleston said.
McCollum said people must know they don't need to do business with shady mortgage firms. Banks will help, and so will programs such as Buy Into Youngstown, he said.
"We want to show somebody else how not to be burned," he said. "Education was probably the best thing that ever happened."
rgsmith@vindy.com