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An affordable American dream:
How one Kings County couple struggled to build the home of
their dreams
By Seth Nidever
Sentinel
Reporter
HOME GARDEN - Amid the dilapidated houses,
vacant lots and trash-strewn streets of this notoriously
impoverished area on Hanford's fringe, the home of Ernest and
Pat Cordero is a sight for sore eyes.
The modest three
bedroom wouldn't impress in some of Hanford's swankier
northside neighborhoods.
But set down smack in the
middle of Home Garden, the Cordero residence looks like a gift
from heaven.
In a way, it was.
For the Corderos, the American dream of
owning a home was destined to remain just that.
Just
five years ago, the elderly, disabled couple were living in a
leaky, ramshackle house, barely making it on Pat Cordero's
disability payments.
The story of how they got into the
pristine home they now enjoy provides a glimpse into the
choices facing low-income families seeking quality, affordable
housing in Kings County.
Rain falling in
In 2001, the Corderos found themselves up
an economic creek without a paddle.
Ernest Cordero had
just been laid off his decades-old job as a pipe layer for
irrigation company Bennett and Bennett.
A myriad of
health problems made him unable to do the heavy lifting
required, and Cordero had no retirement.
He would go
the next three years without any income before finally
qualifying for Social Security disability payments in August
2004.
Pat Cordero wasn't in a much better
position.
Health problems had forced her to retire from
her job at Hacienda House, a local convalescent
home.
Their only income at the time was Pat Cordero's
$770 monthly Social Security check.
To survive, the
couple took to living in a Home Garden home Pat Cordero had
owned outright since 1971.
But home might not be the
proper term for it.
By the time the Corderos took up
residence there, the ancient structure was a ruin. There were
seemingly more holes in the roof than shingles.
Ernest
Cordero covered huge sections with tarps in an effort to hold
back the water, which found its way in anyway.
In one
room, water poured in through a huge hole. The floors were
loose. Much of the exterior paint had chipped off.
It
wasn't their preference, but at least there were no payments
to make and no rent to owe.
And since neither one had a
prayer when it came to qualifying for a new home loan, it
looked like they were stuck, at least for the time
being.
Light at the end
of the
tunnel
Their luck started to change in 2002, when
Ernest Cordero found out about a home rehab program run
through Self-Help Enterprises.
The Visalia-based
nonprofit contracts with seven Valley counties, including
Kings, to administer loan and home construction programs using
federal and state loan subsidies.
The Corderos joined a
crowded waiting list.
It would be a long
wait.
Although the list stretches to nearly 100
families, Self-Help can only finance 12 to 16 home
rehabilitations in a good year, said Rudy Quintana, a loan
processor with the organization.
It was Quintana who
set up the Corderos for the deferred payment loan they
qualified for.
A number of factors make it impossible
to keep up with the demand, Quintana said.
One is just
the sheer number of people applying for both rehab loans and
new home buyer programs.
Those numbers have soared in
the last couple of years thanks to skyrocketing home
prices.
At the same time, wages at the bottom levels
have stagnated and available funds have shrunk, said Self-Help
Vice President Tom Collishaw.
In fact, the application
process for the HOME and CDBG grants that fund many of
Self-Help's programs is so competitive and time-consuming, the
county can only afford to focus on one neighborhood a year,
Collishaw said.
That means an annual rotation between
Home Garden, Armona, Stratford and Kettleman City - to name
the communities that rank highest on the county's hit list of
neighborhoods most in need of housing improvement.
The
result? Long waiting lists with an average two-year lag
time.
Funds are so coveted, they are already spent
before they arrive, according to Quintana.
In the
Corderos' case, when construction of their new home finally
began in August 2004, it was funded with a HOME grant awarded
in 2001.
Resource crunch
And lately, the
available money has been drying up.
Cal-Home, a Prop.
46 program primarily designed to get families into their first
home, will likely end this year, Collishaw said, putting more
pressure on federal programs like HOME and CDBG.
Both
CDBG and HOME, another Housing and Urban Development offshoot,
are important resources for Self-Help programs, Collishaw
said.
Funding for the CDBGs, or Community Development
Block Grants, was left hanging this year after a Bush proposal
to cut the program and move it from the Department of Housing
and Urban Development to the Commerce Department.
That
idea ran into heavy resistance in Congress, Collishaw
said.
"There is real support for CDBG in Congress.
We're not expecting any major shift," he said.
To
permanently fix the funding problem, some California groups
are pushing a ballot initiative to establish a state housing
trust fund.
Signature gathering will happen this year
to qualify the measure for the 2006 ballot, Collishaw
said.
"(The Corderos) clearly are fortunate that they
were qualified and sought help when funds were available,"
Collishaw said.
High demand
It's not difficult
to see why Self-Help's home rehab program is so highly sought
after.
The Corderos won't have to pay off the loan on
their house for 30 years. At that point, the county will
assess whether they can make payments, and if they can, could
start charging them interest, Collishaw said.
If they
sell the house within that time frame, the couple will simply
owe the county the principal amount of the loan.
"It's
a great way for people to fix up properties who don't have the
economic means to do so otherwise," Collishaw said.
But
a far greater number of people are in line to either build or
buy their first home.
Self-Help's build-your-own-home
program, in which low-income families construct their own
homes in exchange for subsidized mortgages, has a waiting list
of some 1,700 families in Kings County alone.
To
qualify, each has to fall below 80 percent of the county
median income.
That would be approximately $31,440 for
a family of four, according to Michael Lane, a Self-Help
administrative analyst.
But the average participant
makes less. Most families make between $20,000 and $30,000,
Lane said.
And soaring home prices are expanding the
pool of applicants, Collishaw said.
"Kings and Tulare
counties have been known as some of the last frontier of
affordable housing in California. And yet, even in our
communities, home ownership is getting further and further out
of reach of working families. People forget that's what we're
talking about," Collishaw said.
But despite the demand,
Self-Help can only finance 150 do-it-yourself homes in a good
year.
"We're just scratching the surface of the need,"
he said.
And such families have few other options for
home ownership, leading some to succumb to predatory lenders,
Collishaw said.
Local factors
But it's not just
the double whammy of shrinking funds and spiking home prices
driving the problem.
Specific Kings County factors also
play a role.
One is the lack of undeveloped land inside
the incorporated areas of Kings County cities, Collishaw
said.
Big developers have snatched up a lot of it, he
said.
Difficulty qualifying families for mortgages has
also been a problem, Collishaw said.
He attributed that
in part to the aggressive bill collection policies of some
"agencies" he mostly elected not to identify.
The only
one he specified by name was Hanford Community Medical
Center.
Many Self-Help applicants said the Seventh-day
Adventist Health-run hospital aggressively referred bills to
collection agencies, according to Collishaw.
And that's
not all.
Collishaw said the county had successfully
brought in HOME and CDBG funds.
And he gave the City of
Hanford a thumbs up for supporting Self-Help's efforts to
build a 40-unit rental property earlier this year.
But
that praise wasn't extended to all Kings County
municipalities.
"Not all cities in Kings County have
the will to support affordable housing for low-income working
families. It can be a tough political issue," Collishaw
said.
He declined to specify which ones he was
referring to.
A standout
Ernest Cordero knows
how fortunate he is.
Standing on his doorstep, he
pointed to a house across the street.
He said the owner
had been been waiting for a couple of years for his number to
come up on a rehab list.
Next door is a run-down house
reminiscent of the dilapidated junker the Corderos used to
live in before it was demolished to make way for their new
home.
Turning and looking at his immaculate new home,
he mused about the plight of others.
"There's a lot of
people that can't afford houses. If they would help them out
too, it would be nice," he said.
(The reporter may be
reached by e-mail at: snidever@pulitzer.net)
(April
30, 2004)
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