A partnership of Flint homeowners, The City of Flint, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, Huntington Bank, and the leadership and skills of Habitat for Humanity and support of the Neighborhood Engagement Hub to manage and guide this work for and with each homeowner.
Partnerships are sometimes just words…this home repair opportunity promises to be much more than that and will clearly require hard work and input from all of us. This unique opportunity to repair and improve the major systems of the home you own is special in several ways:
- You must own and occupy a single-family house in the City of Flint. The value of the house, the assessment, does not limit the amount of the loan that you can apply for.
- The funding can be used for such things as furnace and hot water heater replacement, roof replacement or repairs, kitchen and bath upgrades, deck and porch replacement, new siding.
- All are major repairs and often expensive. Each of us knows what is an urgent and probably costly repair that needs to be done and this Home Improvement Fund may make that possible. “I don’t know enough, I don’t know what it should cost, I might make a mistake!” This unique Flint Home Improvement Fund is bringing a variety of experts to be our guides. And we must be the partners that make it work, so back to learning and working on this!
- You will pre-quality and agree to pay the cost of repairs not larger than $20,000 in no more than 84 months (that’s 7 years). The amount of the loan that you will repay is determined by your household income. This is unique – when you apply be sure that you understand what that amount will be. The loans can be for as much as $20,000. This is one of the important challenges for each of us – we need a roof and a furnace and we want a new porch – We will have 7 years to repay the loan and we will be paying every month. Each of us needs to know our own budget and all of our family’s needs as we plan for this year and for the next 7 years, and then choose which repairs we will do.
- The interest rate on this loan will be determined by our household income – no household income is either too low or too high to qualify for a loan for household repairs but the amount of interest on the loan may be different for every borrower. This loan opportunity is unique in what it can do for Flint and its homeowners. It can and will make a difference in our neighborhoods and in our ability to care for our home in uncertain times. However, each of us homeowners living in a single-family house that we own, or we are purchasing must quickly go to work!
- Applying for this program will require us to organize and assemble and copy a great many of the papers that are a part of our past and present! GET an application either by going online at Flint-HIF.org or by going to Habitat/ReStore at 101 Burton Street in Flint. You can also call 810 766-9089, ext. 213 and ask them to send it to you.
- Create a working file of all the papers that you will need to copy and make an appointment at Habitat or go to the Flint Public Library to copy and create the working file that will be a part of your guide for the next 7 years. You will want to keep estimates and agreements and warranties for this work that will make a difference in your home and in your hometown of Flint.
For more information on the program please visit HIF Flint Journal.
