Williamstown Housing Trust Aims to Help Homeowners Impacted by COVID-19
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The board of the town's Affordable Housing Trust on Wednesday heard a success story about its rental assistance program and discussed how it wants to construct a similar program for homeowners.
Board member Liz Costley, who has been the point person working with Berkshire Housing Development, shared the Williamstown Emergency Rental Assistance Program developed this summer was able recently to help a family stay in their home.
"One renter is going to utilize $10,000 in a grant from WERAP," Costley said. "She owes $12,500, but the landlord, once [BHDC's] Jane Pixley got people talking, decided that $10,000 is better than nothing.
"So the landlord was willing to drop the $2,500 in return for getting $10,000 in back rent. That's the kind of thing Berkshire Housing is so versed in, and the kind of thing we were hoping to hear. The renter is free and clear going forward. The landlord is fairly happy. And this is how our money is being utilized."
The board created the WERAP to assist income-qualified residents who have been impacted financially by the COVID-19 pandemic. Berkshire Housing partnered with the trustees to screen applicants and disperse funds, which the housing trust has been able to replenish with money the town has received through the federal CARES, or Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, Act.
The trustees noted on Wednesday that there are paper versions of the WERAP application available at the town's post office and at the Williamstown Food Pantry on Southworth Street, and they encouraged residents in need to apply as soon as possible.
"That's better for us in terms of the possibility of [CARES] reimbursement," Chair Thomas Sheldon noted. "The more we spend in 2020, the more we can replenish what's available for 2021.
Sheldon also told his colleagues that he had reached out to representatives of local lending institutions about helping the trust develop a program similar to WERAP that helps local homeowners who have suffered financially in the pandemic.
Local banks and Greylock Federal Credit Union have helped the trustees in the past by identifying and screening applicants for the Richard DeMayo Mortgage Assistance Program, which provides grants of up to $15,000 to help first-time homeowners purchase a home in town. Sheldon said the local lenders have a knowledge of who might need help making mortgage payments due to the recent economic downturn and the capacity to screen potential recipients.
"They have someone charged with helping folks facing problems meeting payments," Sheldon said. "COVID-19 didn't introduce the concept to them.
"They have practices and procedures, and I know they've been as forgiving as they can be through this part of the COVID pandemic. But they reach a point where they have to bring to bear other factors, needs and requirements. I think the feeling was [a grant program] was very timely because the crunch is going to start to happen where they reach the end of whatever delays or postponements or forgiveness have been extended to them.
"When those expire, there needs to be a new answer."
Sheldon pointed out that there are state programs to help homeowners with mortgage payments and anything the Trust offers would be a supplement -- much like the WERAP was designed to work in concert with the Residential Assistance to Families in Transition program.
"I have no doubt that this could play a complementary and potentially important role for people who have been adversely affected in their income," Sheldon said. "The lending institution would ascertain that as part of their process."
One important difference between any new mortgage assistance program and the existing DeMayo MAP is that the latter is for new home purchases, and, therefore, it was easy for the trustees to work only with lenders who had a physical office in the town. The problem with creating a program for existing homeowners is that their mortgages may be held by regional or national lenders, Sheldon said.
The solution, he suggested, might be a hybrid program that uses both the local banks and the Pittsfield-based non-profit BHDC to screen applicants. Costley responded that Berkshire Housing already had asked the Trust whether it had a mortgage program because it was aware of a homeowner in town who had the need.
"I think Berkshire Housing would be happy to have us work directly with local lenders and work with them for mortgages outside our local lenders," Costley said.
Sheldon appointed trustees Dan Gura and Stan Parese to work on details of the program and bring a proposal back to the full group.
"I think the first thing is … there's a lot of these programs out there," Gura said. "So the first thing is to find one and copy it. Find someone who has done this and done it well. I can certainly do research on that front."
In other business on Wednesday, the board revisited a decision on how much it will seek from the town's Community Preservation Act funds for fiscal 2022. The CPA has been the primary source of funding for the Trust, in fact, the only source if you don't count the CARES Act money that has been used to replace Trust funds dispersed through the WERAP.
Last month, it landed on a figure of $175,000 in new funds and a request to that town meeting remove a restriction attached to about $19,000 allocated to the Trust in 2018.
On Wednesday, Sheldon recommended adjusting the figure after he participated in a pre-application meeting with members of the Community Preservation Committee, which reviews applications and makes recommendations to town meeting.
Sheldon said the sense of the CPC was that, unlike last year, it would be facing a large number of applications, and he was asked to consider reducing the AHT ask to $160,000 plus the repurposed funds, which if approved by town meeting, would add about $179,000 to the Trust's unrestricted funds on July 1, 2021.
"If we go that route, I'll continue to work with the town manager to see if there are other funds available if this doesn't meet our full need," Sheldon said.
Tags: affordable housing trust, rent program,
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