From The Northwest Herald
Meeting sparks anxiety
By GENEVA WHITE
HARVARD – Buying a home for the first time is difficult enough.
But what if you are low-income, speak little English, and the only home you have known for the past several years is an old, run-down trailer?
That question was on the minds of some of the nearly 40 south-side trailer-park residents who attended a Hispanic Home Buyers workshop Thursday night at city hall.
Though the meeting was intended to provide useful information, a few of the residents left worried about more than developer Carl Roppolo's plan to build a strip mall where their trailers now sit. How to qualify for a loan suddenly was at the forefront.
"I earn too little," Roman Escovar, 56, said through a translator as he stood outside city hall. "I don't earn enough for a house."
A zoning change that allows Roppolo to build the strip mall on the trailer-park property was approved by the city council last week. Roppolo, owner of Winchester Homes Group in Belvidere, bought the trailer park after the former owner, Gary Nissen, died in March. Under Illinois law, the developer must give the residents one year to relocate.
Conducted mostly in Spanish, the workshop included presentations from local Realtors and bankers, as well as representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Illinois Migrant Council.
Michael Neese, vice president of Harvard Savings Bank, told residents that statistically, a risky credit score was considered to be less than 620.
"Always pay your bills on time," he said. "If you have missed payments, you need to get those payments current and stay current."
People who do not have credit scores might be able to provide the bank with a 12-month history of successfully paying bills such as electric, gas and cable, Neese said.
But it was not just residents who were concerned about their ability to become homebuyers. Terry Nelson, the president of the Mobile Home Owners Association of Illinois in Des Plaines, said she did not know how some of the residents at the meeting could buy houses.
"The reason they're in this housing market is because it's what they can afford," she said. "People go into this housing market because they can't always afford a down payment on a standard home."
Still, others were confident that home ownership could be possible for the residents. Joe Starzynski, an account executive for Home State Bank in Woodstock, said a program through the Corporation for Affordable Homes of McHenry County provided first-time home buyers assistance with down payments.
Several of the residents could qualify for such a program, he said.
"Absolutely," he said. "Nowadays, there are even more programs."