Finding Homes in High-Priced Town
Sunday, December 19, 2004. The New York Times, Section
11.
By Eleanor Charles
In
lower Fairfield County, where the median price of a house
is above $600,000 and new homes in Greenwich top out around
$14 million, creating relatively low-priced housing is as
easy as persuading the proverbial 800-pound gorilla to kindly
leave the room.
But
a program that began adressing the issue five years ago has
placed 360 individuals and families earning 30 to 80 percent
of the area median income of $115,000 into homes in Greenwich,
Stamford and Norwalk.
The
program, called Adopt-A-House, operates within the Housing
Development Fund Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Stamford.
Its housing fund has grown to $40 million from $15 million
originally and is used in part to privde low-interest mortgages
and pay certain costs for buyers.
The
program has been so successful that it is expanding throughout
Fairfield County and up the Connecticut River Valley into
New Milford in Litchfield County and into Derby and Ansonia
in New Haven County. It has made happy homeowners of teachers,
health-care workers, firefighters police officers, bookkeepers,
waitresses, bus drivers, bank tellers, executive assistants,
college instructors and social workers—the kind of people
generally considered essential to a community. ..
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