New Haven Independent

We shall return for the young man’s answer, but while he contemplated …

Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS), which rehabbed Ramirez’s house and provided her with a course on homeownership through its Home Ownership Center (HOC) program, restores 10 to 15 houses a year, all in badly blighted areas, bringing the total since its founding in the 1980s to approximately 200 houses. This makes NHS the leading provider of affordable housing in the city. Nearly 2,000 clients have also learned about how to avoid predatory lenders, and the step-by-step process of obtaining a mortgage and homeowner education through NHS and its HOC program

NHS Executive Director and founder James Paley (pictured) emphasized the importance of the HOC program. “It’s not just the how-to of homeownership education like how to get a good mortgage, but, increasingly, with taxes and the costs of energy going up, we help people to be as prepared as possible for post-ownership, which means how they can save after they purchase their house and their expenditures go up.”

To this end, Paley said NHS is going to be opening up, in a building on Hudson Street behind their headquarters, a Home Improvement and Energy Conservation Laboratory, probably this summer. He said there would be hands-on exhibits to help people learn how to make repairs, reduce loss of heat through windows, for example, a kind of ongoing learning on the responsibilities of home ownership and maintenance. He expects those enrolled in HOC to use the lab for free and there would be an affordable pay structure for the general public.

The man who restored Ramirez’s house - it is his 140th in 11 years of work for NHS - is Henry Dynia, the agency’s senior rehabilitation specialist. “Just look at this original board-and-batten gable,” he called down from the second- floor balcony. “We found it underneath the vinyl siding. Along with the period detail on the outside, it’s the most beautiful part of the building.

“The building had been abandoned for at least ten years. There was nothing left on the inside. It was a place for squatters, and for pigeons, so we gutted it, added windows on the front and back, because the lot is very narrow, and now it really works. Light and bright. The house is really typical of what we do.”

Such high standards have attracted national funders whose representatives joined Ramirez in her house to celebrate. They included (left to right) Kevin Moran of Bank of America, Jacqueline B. O’Garrow of Countrywide Home Loans, and Terry Touranjae of Nationwide Insurance.

Another partner of NHS’s home ownership center program was Bob Kantor Fannie Mae’s director in Connecticut, who was on hand to offer congratulations. “It’s not only quality, but it’s careful detail in everything NHS does, and look how important that is in the big picture. It sets up an image for the rest of the block, then the next blocks, and then ultimately the community catches the fever, and that’s how a blighted area changes. I’m talking about spirit,” he said. But Kantor was not being only philosophical. “The wealth that is created in a home is basic to people rising out of poverty. The home is the most common collateral for a business loan, so what’s being done here is basic to transformation of a city, and what is going on in New Haven is a model.”

In a city that wrecked so much good housing in the 1960s, NHS’s work and recognition are especially gratifying. Milt Sharp, of Neighborworks America, which pioneered the Home Ownership Center concept (now in 93 cities), said that NHS’s adaptation of the model is the “gold standard,” and one of the places where new ideas are piloted.

Oh, and what did Edison Ramirez decide, finally, he liked best about his new house? “I like the floor, “he said, perhaps because he was so close to it.