The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development, nonprofit Community Action Team, and local officials today celebrated a St. Helens family that has successfully built their way to homeownership through USDA’s Mutual Self-Help Housing Program. This program offers families with modest means a hands-on approach to achieve homeownership by providing grants to help local organizations carry out housing construction or rehabilitation projects in rural areas.
Over the past seven months, Jason and Jessica Smith spent 30 hours a week giving new life to a foreclosed home that had fallen into disrepair and vandalism, in addition to their fulltime jobs where Jessica works as a veterinary technician and Jason as a service station worker. Jason and Jessica, along with their two children, are now ready to move out of their cramped apartment and into their newly updated four-bedroom house.
The local sponsor in St. Helens, Community Action Team (CAT), is using their USDA technical assistance grant to provide coordination and training for the home renovations and to secure the assistance of professional subcontractors through their Self-Help Acquisition Rehabilitation Program (SHARP). The Smith family, one of three current participants in Columbia County, provided a portion of the labor to renovate the house, buying down the price, and they are receiving a low-interest loan through Rural Development’s Single Family Housing Direct Program for the remaining cost of the home.
While most USDA Mutual Self-help Housing programs across the nation focus on new construction, CAT wanted to address issues with homes that were foreclosed and abandoned during the recent housing crisis. In St. Helens, like many rural small towns, the housing recovery is taking longer than in surrounding urban areas. Lingering impacts include the blight that follows when multiple vacant homes in a neighborhood are left to deteriorate and attract nuisances like vandals and squatters that lower everyone’s property values. Helping working families who are financially ready transition into homeownership, like the Smiths, not only breathes new life into neighborhoods, but also frees up scarce rental housing. At the same time, the first-time homebuyers are building equity and personal assets through homeownership and home improvements.
Since 2009, USDA has invested more than 2.6 billion to support rural homeownership in Oregon. In 2015 alone, USDA provided more than $470 million in funding to help nearly 2,400 low-income rural Oregon families buy and maintain their homes.
Editor's Note: Photos available upon request.