As mortgage rates and demand create major barriers for potential home buyers trying to find homes in the competitive North Texas housing market, Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity is launching a new benefit to help their employees that may also help the nonprofit compete for top talent.
"We had to ask ourselves at Habitat, you know our teammates pour so much into serving the communities that we strive to serve, what can we do to reinvest into our own people," said Blaine Cowart, VP of Homeowner Services for Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity.
Cowart says the answer was to establish a new housing assistance program as an employee benefit. They named it the Welcome Home program. She explained that the nonprofit will use its $9 million gift from MacKenzie Bezos to provide down payment assistance and closing costs up to $13,000 in the form of a forgivable loan over a 5-year term for employees who meet income requirements.
"Housing is a cornerstone of so many other outcomes of our lives. So when an employer like Habitat makes an investment in their own employees to make sure that those employees cannot just access affordable housing but housing that is close to work, that's going to reduce their commute times and the stress for them," Cowart said.
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Cowart says the benefit is similar to the types of Employer Assisted Housing Programs (EAHP) you typically see some local governments use to help public servants including police, firefighters and teachers buy homes in the communities where they serve.
Texas Real Estate Research Center research analyst Clare Losey says as homes become less affordable across the DFW Metroplex, we need more programs like Welcome Home to close the affordability gap.
"When we think about homeownership, especially for low and moderate-income families, it is still the primary mechanism by which they build wealth in this country. This is certainly one positive step. And I will say there's a long litany of literature that has shown that down payment assistance programs are very effective," Losey said.
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Cowart says her team at Habitat hopes their investment will inspire other employers to follow suit.
"That has critical implications for employees to be able to be happier overall and more importantly overall more financially stable," she said.
Welcome Home participants will also be required to go through homebuyer education programs. As of mid-September, eight Habitat workers had applied and the first buyer was already on track to be in their home by November 2022.
