DINUBA — Homeownership is so important to a stable work force and successful families that private industry must help employees make the investment, said Fred Ruiz, co-founder of Ruiz Foods.

"I really believe this is part of our responsibility as an employer," he said Friday.

Ruiz, chairman of the largest locally owned employer in Tulare County, spoke at the presentation of a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Self-Help Enterprises for homeowner education programs.

Promoting homeownership among Ruiz Foods employees is a vow that he made to President Bush when Bush spoke about minority homeownership at the Dinuba plant one year ago, Ruiz said.

"When the president was leaving, I did promise the president that I would let him know how we did roughly a year from that day," he said.

Since then, two employees have bought homes through programs held at Ruiz Foods, he said. Sixteen families are preapproved and looking for homes, and 176 workers have attended homeownership classes or signed up for them. Ruiz Foods employs about 1,800 workers in the county.

Self-Help Enterprises has been holding homeownership classes at Ruiz Foods since this past summer. The classes have been offered through the Una Casa Para Mi Familia, or A House for My Family, program established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Minority Homeownership Initiative.

Self-Help, a Visalia-based nonprofit developer of housing, also offers other homeownership classes throughout the Central Valley.

Participants cover a wide range of topics such as saving money, applying for a loan and overcoming barriers to homeownership.

Such barriers can include low income and poor credit. Dinuba residents, however, face an additional obstacle: few houses to buy.

Dinuba's location about 15 miles from Highway 99 makes it difficult to attract builders' attention, officials said.

"On any given week, there was probably one or two [houses] on the market," said Dan Meinert, Dinuba's deputy city manager.

But officials and developers are working to satisfy demand, he said. The city has approved development of 750 subdivision lots, which will be built over the next few years.