Home : Press Center : Cape Gets Employer-Assisted Housing

Cape Gets Employer-Assisted Housing

Katrina Finton thought she would have to leave Cape Cod.

A Cape native, Finton hoped to stay in the area where she'd grown up.

However, she also wanted to own a home. Though she had moved back in with her mother in order to save toward this goal, she feared that the region's high prices would force her to house-hunt elsewhere.

"I thought for sure I was going to have to leave the Cape," said the 27-year old Finton.

Then she heard about the employer-assisted housing initiative, a pilot program intended to help alleviate the Cape's shortage of affordable workforce housing.

The program, in which the state and private businesses partner to help workers obtain housing, is the first of its kind in Massachusetts.

Finton's employer, Shepley Wood Products, was the first business to sign up for the program.

And on June 19, Finton moved into a 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom house in Sandwich, becoming the initiative's first success story.

"We are happy to be involved, and overjoyed to be able to help Katrina claim ownership of her first home," said Tony Shepley, president of Shepley Wood Products.

The program provides workers who want to buy a home with as much as $10,000 toward down payment and closing costs; renters could receive as much as $5,000 for security deposit and first and last months' rent.

To be eligible for funds from the initiative, which is administered by the Hyannis-based Housing Assistance Corp., a worker must be employed by a participating business.

Currently, Shepley Wood Products, the Housing Assistance Corp. and Cape Air offer the program to their employees, and several other companies have expressed interest, said Vicki Marchant, the workforce housing coordinator for the housing agency.

Additionally, to be eligible, a household must earn no more than 110 percent of the median income for the area, currently $78,800 for four people or $63,140 for two people.

For Finton, the funding came at a particularly auspicious moment.

She had looked at her future home for the first time on a Sunday. On the following Tuesday, she said, she received her approval from the housing program and put in an offer that same day.

"If I hadn't gotten approved, I wouldn't have been able to make the offer on the house," she said.

Though Finton is only the first buyer to take advantage of the program, her experience bodes well for its success, said those involved.

"She was able to go through the process very quickly -- it went very smoothly," said Nancy Davison, vice president of operations at the Housing Assistance Corp. "It is working exactly as we hoped it would."

The money that workers receive through the program takes the form of a loan, 20 percent of which is forgiven for every year the employee continues to work for the participating business.

If Finton leaves her job at Shepley in a year, for example, she will have to pay back 80 percent of the money she received; if she works there for five more years, she will owe nothing.

For employers, the benefits of participating in the program are twofold, Shepley said.

"Employee retention really plays second fiddle to the satisfaction of seeing a deserving and hardworking person secure their future in homeownership," he said.

"Attracting and retaining quality employees is just an added benefit of participating in the plan."