In Hamden, 1st-Time Homes For The Holidays

In the corner of Renee Reed’s new living room, a box sits, wrapped, beneath a white synthetic Christmas tree. The contents of that wrapped box pale in comparison to the biggest gift Reed got this season: The walls, ceiling, and floor around the box.

Reed is the latest recipient of a loan from Hamden’s First-Time Homebuyer Down Payment Assistance Program. She smiled as she looked around her living room at the white walls with exposed wood trim.

“It feels great,” she said. ​“It’s like the American dream. That’s what most of our goals are, is to own your own home. And it feels wonderful.”

Reed, 47, has never owned a house before. For the last few years, she and her husband rented an apartment in West Haven. Now, for the first time, she can remodel her bathroom without the landlord bothering her, and she can walk around her house without worrying about disturbing the people living below her. And she has something major to pass down to the next generation.

She started with the bathroom. She painted it and redid the molding. She just has to put in a new toilet — white, instead of the pink on that came with the house.

The kitchen needs more work. The counter-height wall in the knockout between the kitchen and living room is just a web of wood blocks, arranged in a pattern. ​“That looks like 1965 here,” said Reed, pointing at it. The wood paneling in the kitchen, too, will go.

“It’s just nice because you can do those sorts of things when you own your own home,” she said.

The interest-free loan that Reed received from the town comes from a federal grant that Hamden gets every year: The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). Provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the grant began in 1974 under President Gerald Ford as a way of administering more HUD funds at the local level, rather than from Washington.

On Dec. 9, Hamden announced that it had received about $10,000 more than last year, bringing the grant total to $480,319. Hamden is one of 23 communities in Connecticut that receive the grant (including the state itself), according to Hamden Director of Community Development Adam Sendroff. It receives the second-smallest grant amount of any municipality in the state, meaning it has to use its funds sparingly. By comparison, New Haven receives almost $3.8 million. The grant funds programs like one Reed took advantage of, as well as grants for various nonprofit public-service agencies.

In the 2019 – 2020 CDBG budget, Hamden set aside a little over $50,000 to help people like Reed buy houses for the first time. The program provides matching loans of up to $5,000 to help low- to moderate-income home buyers put down payments on their homes. Those loans have no interest and no monthly payments. They are applied as a lien on the house, which must be paid back to the town only when the house is sold. The houses must be in census tracts 1651 (along State Street), 1655, or 1656 (both in southern Hamden along Dixwell Avenue).

Reed said that when she and her husband were living in West Haven, her husband became fed up with renting. So, ​“one day I just got up and went to the realtor,” she said. She ended up taking a first-time homebuyer’s class at the New Haven HomeOwnership Center. The house she settled on, off of State Street in southeastern Hamden, was listed for $157,000. She bought it for $143,000, with a $4,000 matching loan from the town. She said she closed on Nov. 15, and moved in two days later.

“I just think that now we have something that we can leave behind,” she said. She has a step-son who, if she holds onto the house, can inherit it.

“A lot of applicants tell me they want to buy a house so they have something to pass along to their children. Becoming a homeowner is likely the most effective way to build wealth that can be passed along to the next generation,” said Sendroff. ​“Down-payment assistance is not just a band-aide.”

“Cold Cold”

On the other side of East Rock, while Reed was enjoying the warm confines of her new home, Joy Morrison was enjoying her Morse Street house now at a livable temperature.

She had just spent the first two weeks of December with no heat. By mid-December, she said, ​“it started getting cold cold.”

The day before Thanksgiving, her 26-year-old furnace failed. ​“Just conked out,” she said. The cold started to seep in through the windows and doors. She said that at one point, her house was 25 degrees.

Morrison called her insurance first. They told her that they couldn’t help because the furnace was so old. Three- or four-years-old they might cover, she said, but not 26 years.

She called Southern Connecticut Gas Company. It was Nov. 27, and they told her they would not be able to come until Dec. 23. They could fix the problem, or replace the furnace, and roll the cost into her monthly utility bills until she paid it off.

She went to Home Depot and got a space heater, but it only heated a small area. She would keep it on when she and her daughter were at home at night, and would turn it off during the day to save electricity. She and her daughter slept in multiple layers of clothing, with blankets piled high onto their beds, and wore all the clothing they could inside. Morrison used the oven to heat at least the kitchen.

One day, she took meat out of the freezer to thaw and set it out on the counter. It was just as frozen as before when she got home.

“I didn’t know who to turn to to get help,” she said.

When she called 211, they told her to call Sendroff at the M. L. Keefe Center. Sendroff set her up with Edward Ryan at the Ryan Oil Company, which is based in Hamden, and gave her the application for the Emergency Residential Rehabilitation program.

The emergency rehab program provides interest-free loans to low- and moderate-income residents for house-related emergencies, including leaking roofs and broken furnaces. The town forgives 10 percent of the loan each year the resident remains in the house. The 2019 – 2020 CDBG budget set aside $160,000 for its residential rehab programs. Loans amounts can reach up to $20,000.

Morrison applied and got the loan. Ryan came to her house and temporarily fixed the furnace, though he said it still needs to be replaced. It will cost somewhere around $5,000.

When the Independent visited, the heat was back on, but Ryan still needed to come back to install the new furnace. The space heater was still out, and from time to time, the heat would come on with a loud grating sound. But at least it was warm.