...I combined the little known FHA-312 housing rehab program with a loan limit of about $35K I think itwas back then. Then I'd use Community Development grant money to go shopping at the VA and FHA foreclosure listings and I'd buy the houses, townhomes, condos and zero-lot line units on the cheap, sometimes nothing. Most were in pretty bad shape. Copper gone. Whole HVAC units torn off the concrete pads. But the structures were sound.
I setup an application process where public housing tenants and the income eligible could receive homeownership training and credit counseling. This they had to finish whether they got picked or not. Only the serious applied. We paired up the house and applicants up based on the amount of 312 money they could qualify for. Working the process backwards from affordability first. They were all on 20 year mortgages. I sold the houses for $1 with a 5 to 10 year buy-back provision to keep the flippers out. I called it The Greenhouse Program.
They still run a version of it here in Nashville now. I'd chosen the applicants after creating a random number BASIC program on my office's old 286 IBM PC (this was 1987-88 so we had only one and everybody shared it) and assigned each application a number. When they matched that's the applicant who got the chance. Still no guarantee. That way I kept the politicians off my back who like to hand out gifts to their constituents and friends.
There's worse that could be done with them. Between this situation and the US wasting over 40% of of its food, we're a nation of plenty drowning in all the stuff we've accumulated, but greed demands scarcity to make this pinball machine run. So we end up looking like slackers and louts who don't know how to managed their affairs properly.
- And I suppose we don't.....
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