UNC offers to partner with Greeley on home-ownership incentives

GREELEY – The Greeley City Council on Tuesday night will consider a plan in which it would manage a program for the University of Northern Colorado that is intended to encourage UNC employees to buy homes near the school.

UNC has offered to chip in $1,500 in down-payment assistance for any full-time university employee who purchases and moves into a home near the campus. The intergovernmental agreement the city council will consider would accept UNC’s offer and have the city running the program,

The city council meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. at council chambers, 919 Seventh St.

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“I think this is a win-win for everyone,” said Dan Weaver, UNC’s vice president for external and university relations. “We’ve been in discussions ever since the city started talking about this.”

UNC’s $1,500 would supplement funds from a $150,000 pilot program recently launched by the city and its Urban Renewable Authority. Under the Greeley Home Ownership Program for Employees – or G-HOPE – full-time employees of the city, UNC, Greeley-Evans School District 6 and Banner Health’s North Colorado Medical Center would qualify for down-payment assistance if they buy and move into homes in the University District, whose boundaries generally extend east and west from Fourth to 23rd avenues and north and south from 13th Street to U.S. Highway 34.

Under the program, the city would provide $2,500 “forgivable loans” for down-payments throughout the district – but with some extra incentive to locate on its eastern edges: $4,000 between 11th and Eighth avenues and $6,000 on or east of Eighth.

“We’re interested in the stability of homeownership,” said Becky Safarik, Greeley’s assistant city manager, “so the loans are 20 percent forgivable each year – and at the end of five years the debt is forgiven.

“So if, say, the homeowner moved after two years they’d owe 60 percent of our loan, but if they stayed for five years, they’d owe us nothing,” Safarik said, adding that “UNC has decided to sweeten the pot.”

The money from UNC would come from “strategic-investment funds we’ve set aside for programs like this that come up,” Weaver said. “After a few years we’ll see if it works. We’ll ask home buyers, ‘Did this incentive have any influence on your decision to move into the University District or not?’ We can gauge success purely by numbers, too – how many people use the program, and how long do they stay in the house.”

The loans have no income limits, Safarik said. “The employee can be a dining-hall worker, an LPN, or a professor or physician.” The home buyer does, however, have to contribute at least $1,000 of his or her own money toward the down payment, she said.

Safarik said the city has gotten positive feedback on the program from prospective residents and real-estate firms alike. Some for-sale signs in the area have begun sprouting attachments proclaiming “This property G-Hope eligible,” she said, and Sears Real Estate is offering $500 off its commission for home purchases within the district.

“We’ve gotten lots of interest from people who would like to live closer to where they work,” she said. “When you have people invested in their homes, it contributes so much to things like neighborhood watch groups, civic life and neighborhood schools.”

According to a flyer promoting the G-HOPE program, “Besides the satisfaction of one’s own place and the security it represents to a homeowner, higher rates of home ownership benefit the whole community as well. Studies show home ownership promotes higher academic achievement, more cohesive communities, better connected families, improved health and safety, and a stronger economy.”

“We’ve been working on this for a couple of years,” Safarik said. “It’s an effort within our University District in which we promote a number of collaborative efforts. We decided that we would expand the area of influence to include those four major employers.”

More information on the G-HOPE program is available online at greeleygov.com/government/special-projects, through the Greeley Urban Renewal Authority at 970-350-9830 or through the human-resources departments of the city, UNC, NCMC or District 6. GURA also is a source of low-interest-rate loans for certain home improvements.