This column was submitted Friday, but because I’ve been busy covering the presidential caucus, I’m just now getting around to publishing it. I apologize.
By Diane Denish
We’re at that point of the session where nerves go jangling. Advocates for good, social causes scour the budget that the House has prepared hoping – sometimes against hope – that their programs received a blessing. Lobbyists roam from committee room to committee room trying to advance, amend or kill bills.
This last week, we heard a lot of chatter and debate about bills reforming health care and ethics, authorizing stem-cell research and funding state government.
What we didn’t hear a lot about is one of the most fundamental issues facing not only
More and more of us are watching a national mortgage crisis that threatens to destroy families’ equity, not to mention the comfort and safety that they experience in owning a place that is theirs and theirs alone.
Home equity is the key to personal financial success. We know that buying a home helps build an economic background to support a family’s future. A home outlives the life of a mortgage. More important, a home gives people a stake in their communities. It makes them better neighbors, gets them involved in their children’s schools and ensures they’ll be good citizens.
A handful of bills are working their way through this year’s session that aim to not only support those aims but the goals of creating a cleaner, greener future. They’re initiatives of the state’s Mortgage Finance Authority, of which I’m honored to serve as chair. Among them:
• $2.5 million for the Energy$avers Program
This provides low- or even no-interest loans to builders who install energy-efficient systems when they’re building new homes or to new or existing home-buyers who retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient.
We all want to be more green, to save energy and reduce our carbon footprint, but for people who are pinching pennies (and that means most of us), easing the sticker shock of opening a utility bill matters more than the philosophical intent to spare our children’s earth.
That said, the upfront and extra costs of energy-efficient roofs, windows and heating and cooling systems can’t be ignored. They’re an investment in the future, and whatever we as a state can do to support that investment will benefit all of us in the long run.
• $2 million for the Emergency Repair Fund
While we don’t anticipate a Katrina-scale catastrophe here, we have a history of neighborhoods flooded by monsoons, roofs damaged by snow and families forced to deal with a loved one’s sudden disability.
This fund provides money for repairs to homes, inside or out, and pays for disability modifications.
• $2 million for the HERO Program
Since 2005, the state has provided homebuying help to families where at least one member is a police officer, nurse, teacher, firefighter or active member of the armed services. To date, the program has leveraged first- and second-mortgages to a total of $30 million, and estimates this $2 million will leverage another $30 million in below-market loans and down-payments.
This aid goes to essential workers who often can’t afford to live in the communities they serve. These are hardworking, taxpaying citizens who just so happen to make very good neighbors.
• $1 million for the Homebuyer Education Program
Helping someone finance a new home isn’t enough. We must help them understand the financial intricacies underlying the variety of mortgage loans out there – witness what too many people are experiencing under adjustable-rate mortgages.
Foreclosures not only cost families dreams, but hurt an entire neighborhood’s property values. The more we can prepare a first-time homeowner for the realities of the market, the better.
While Congress debates the best way to rescue a damaged homeownership landscape, the New Mexico Legislature is taking steps to give more of our citizens an avenue to the American dream.
Denish is the state’s lieutenant governor. She will be writing a weekly column throughout the 30-day legislative session that is underway. You can reach her office at (505) 476-2250.