Habitat Rental Program Gives Potential Homeowners More Time to Qualify

A new Habitat for Humanity pilot program is helping residents address the affordable housing crisis in South Mississippi. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

Habitat for Humanity’s Mississippi Gulf Coast Home Ownership Incubator Program was created for those Coast residents who have a need for affordable housing but because of their credit history or outstanding debts may not be mortgage ready. That is a growing problem says Erica Higgs, family services manager for Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Gulf Coast,
“We realized that a lot of people who are not able to afford our mortgages because of the rental environment post storm they might have been paying so much for a rental unit, that they didn’t’ have enough money in their budget to really attack some of those issues that were keeping them from being mortgage ready.”
Rental prices have skyrocketed since Katrina and many are paying much more than the recommended thirty percent of their income on housing. The two year incubator program provides affordable rents to those enrolled so that an individual can start saving for a mortgage, and requires anyone enrolled to take homeownership classes. Brenda Palmer, who has been in a new home through the incubator program for two months says those classes are invaluable,
“Yeah those classes are very helpful, because you learn a lot of stuff. You learn how to maintain and how to own a home, help get your credit so you can own a home. There is a lot of opportunity in this program.”
Lindsay Freise with Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Gulf Coast says the whole goal of Habitat for Humanity is a hand up not a hand out,
“If they’re putting the effort forth and their families putting the effort forth, and they realize that the whole community and volunteers from everywhere are coming to help this program they have a certain pride in it and now to maintain it once they move in.”
Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Gulf Coast has built 300 homes since Katrina, and still has 75 families on the waiting list.