Chaka Fattah Thursday introduced a plan to help Philadelphians buy homes and stay in them when times get tough.
His housing plan features a tax credit for first-time homebuyers of up to $4,000, calls for increasing the Housing Trust Fund by devoting expiring tax abatements to it (which the campaign says could be worth $43 million by 2015) and calls for creating a $10 million Philadelphia Homeowners' Emergency Assistance Program to loan money to Philadelphia homeowners facing foreclosure. The last initiative is modeled on a state program that Fattah helped create.
A tax credit for first-time homebuyers is particularly attractive, since transfer taxes in the city are an expensive surprise for anyone who doesn't have some equity built up.
And the Housing Trust Fund is an essential program for affordable housing in the city; it steps in to help make affordable housing projects possible, to help pay for home repairs for low- and moderate-income families and, in extreme cases, help people on the brink of homelessness.
It may be increasingly needed as PHA attempts to sell its scattered-site housing and more Philadelphia families are forced to find new homes to live in.