U. incentives attract home buyers to area

Sixty-three buyers have taken advantage of the incentives program. The only bump in Charles Brown's smooth road to homeownership was asbestos. And even that was a relatively smooth obstacle, according to Brown, a counselor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania who credits the University's Home Ownership Incentive Program with providing the money necessary to pay for the removal of a basement's worth of the carcinogen. Since it was implemented last spring, the eight-month-old program -- run by Diane-Louise Wormley, Penn's managing director of community housing -- has also helped pave the way for 62 other Penn faculty and staff members to set up house in West Philadelphia. "The thing that really made a difference was the housing incentive program that Penn offered," Brown said. "We just felt like God was saying, 'Here's more money for your dollar'." The new program is far outshining its predecessor, through which only 36 people bought properties last year. The old program, which began in 1965, provided 105 percent loans for University employees seeking to buy properties in West Philadelphia and 100 percent for certain parts of Center City. The new one is a step up: With a buyers' promise to retain their house for at least seven years, the program gives University employees a choice between a one-time grant of $15,000 for immediate use towards the down payment, renovations and other costs of a new home, or $3,000 a year for seven years for similar work. A separate program offers "120 percent loans" to Penn faculty and staff members who buy homes in University City. The loans provide 100 percent of the purchase price, 15 percent of the total costs of housing rehabilitation and 5 percent for closing costs, the expenses incurred in transferring ownership of property. The incentive program has a counterpart in a home-improvement loan program for University employees who already own houses in the area. Fifty-one homeowners are taking advantage of the program, which supplies owners with up to $7,500 for exterior improvements. And you had better act fast: The exterior-renovation program and the home-ownership incentive program each have a limit of 150 participants. The cash incentive program is one of many initiatives the University organized to increase home ownership in the area. Wormley is also the head of the Single Family Rehabilitation Program -- through which the University buys and renovates dilapidated properties in the area. "It's like free money that I just can't see not using," Jennifer Luongo, a clerk at HUP, said of the $15,000 she and her roommate received to aid their purchase of a four-bedroom house near 45th Street. Luongo, who earned a degree last year from the Graduate School of Education, was looking for housing last summer when she heard about the program through a co-worker. Although she had only been looking to rent, with the help of the $15,000 she was able to buy the $78,000 house. "We both just graduated and didn't have start-up money. We wouldn't have had the money to do it," said Luongo, 22, who used the cash for closing costs and a down payment on her two story home. Brown, however, was already looking to buy a house when he read about the program in The Philadelphia Inquirer. In fact, the article describing the program landed on his desk the same day that he was going to bid on a house in Upper Darby, Pa., located immediately west of Philadelphia. "I let the house go, got some paperwork, talked to a few people, looked around and the rest is a mortgage," Brown said, summing up his house search. Brown is one of 20 people participating in the program who elected to receive seven yearly installments of $3,000, instead of all the funding at once. After using his own money for the $80,000-plus 49th Street purchase, Brown said the $3,000 a year will go toward day care and eventually schooling for his 10-month-old son. The family's six-bedroom house, complete with lead-glass windows in the living room, hardwood floors and a basement is quite a change from the two bedroom apartment in Philadelphia's Overbrook section in which the family used to live. "I'm 6'4" and I can walk through the attic without stooping down," Brown said. While Penn's Vice President of Facilities Services Omar Blaik is also enjoying the inside of his newly purchased $200,000 home, he likes the outside, namely an L-shaped garden in the side and back of his yard, just as much. Blaik -- who spent about six months commuting to the University from New York when he first started working at the Penn 1 1/2 years ago -- was already planning on buying a house in University City. "Proximity is a wonderful thing," Blaik said. He added that being able to stop in and visit his son at the Penn Children's Center -- a University-owned day care center currently located at 42nd and Spruce streets -- when he has a break during the day is a bonus of living near campus. And according to Blaik, the annual $3,000 courtesy of the program that he will use for long-term investments in his new property is "the icing on the cake." The program was also a pleasant surprise for Veterinary School Professor Peter Dodson and his wife, who in recent years found themselves looking for a change from the row house adjacent to Clark Park where they had lived for 23 years. The Dodsons actually made an offer on another house a year before the program began, but the owners refused it. "It was just very good fortune," Dodson said, as the delay meant the program was put into effect before they purchased their current home at 43rd Street and Osage Avenue. The couple used the $15,000 from the program for their closing costs and to redo the basement of their three bedroom house. Dodson said his wife frequently jokes about their big, 50-by-100-foot yard by saying that she "bought a yard and the house came with it."