The Hyannis-based nonprofit Housing Assistance is offering free classes on how to buy your first-ever home on Cape Cod.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with Housing Assistance CEO Alisa Magnotta to learn more about how these classes fit into the nonprofit's broader goal of addressing the region's housing crisis.
Gilda Geist There's the First Steps to Home Ownership class, and then the First Time Home Buyers workshop. Can you walk us through what these classes are, how they're different and how they fit together?
Alisa Magnotta Absolutely. For the long-term sustainability and viability of our region, we need people to be invested here through homeownership products. We've been constructing classes and a coaching program so that we can help people get connected to the resources they need to be homeowners. The First Time Home Buyer class is when somebody is ready to make that purchase. It goes into a lot more details about home maintenance, the loan products themselves [and] how to maintain a home. The earlier class, the kind of homeownership lite class, is really about financing, your debt/income ratio—[it gets] in the weeds a little bit before you talk to a bank, and then we make those connections out to banks for mortgages and how to save for a down payment and stuff like that.
GG The timing of these classes is supposed to line up with a new home ownership opportunity in Hyannis, right?
AM Yeah, continuously throughout the year we will have home ownership opportunities that come up and lotteries that come up. We want to have classes that are available through the year for our residents and friends and neighbors to be able to access other housing, not just ours. But yes, we are getting ready to break ground on a new, 50-unit project in Hyannis on Stevens Street that will be a condo ownership [opportunity]. It will break ground, we think, at the end of October, beginning of November. It'll take about a year [to build], and then those units will be on the market end of 2026 or so. So, we want to have buyers in the pipeline ready for that, and ready for whatever opportunities come up along the way as well.
GG So when we think about the sheer scale of Cape Cod's affordable housing crisis, it can be hard for people to kind of wrap their heads around the idea that a class or a few classes could actually help you buy a home if you don't have the resources. I think for a lot of people, it feels very unreachable. So can you kind of contextualize how these classes could actually help people?
AM We hear that often, that it seems unattainable, not possible, and yet we have people that are buying homes that would never have imagined it in their entire lives. And that's really what we're in the business of, is creating that access and giving people a way to see themselves here and sourcing those deals, whether it's on a construction side, or creating good relationships with banks so that we've got good end user loan products. And we're working with individuals and households to make sure that they have a good credit score or help them change their credit score, help them get a pathway to the savings that they may need, or understanding what kind of down payment assistance is out there. So, it is simple on one hand, but it's also very complex when you can't just write the check, right? We know the ins and outs, we know the way to do it, and that's what we want to do, is to help people get that opportunity.
GG These classes, are they free or do they cost money?
AM Nope, they're free.
GG And are they for anyone? Do you have to be a client of Housing Assistance?
AM No, you do not have to be a client. They're for anyone. It's for capacity-building in the region. It doesn't mean that you have to buy one of our housing units that are coming online. We have a long history of helping people get into homeownership, whether it's an affordable deed-restricted [home] or market-rate condos. We have a realtor on staff that works with individuals to help them get that home buyer experience and have that success.
For more information on the First Steps to Home Ownership class, including how to sign up, visit the Housing Assistance website.
