For Wanda Levy, the boarded up homes near her neighborhood are more than vacant buildings.
In Providence, banks have foreclosed on nearly 2,000 homes since January 2006.
“They’re like cemeteries,” Levy said. “It’s like somebody died.”
At a foreclosed home across the street from Levy’s weathered blue Colonial Revival, Mayor David Cicilline unveiled a program today aimed at easing the city’s foreclosure crisis.
Called Come Home to Providence, the program will use federal stimulus money to provide loans at zero interest to qualified residents. The program also will help pay for repairs and renovations for people purchasing foreclosed properties.
“It’s about the heart and soul of a neighborhood, about how residents feel about their neighborhood,” Cicilline said.
About $3.3 million has been allocated to the effort from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization program, but the mayor said he believed the city would be able to tap into additional funds from state and other sources as the program develops.
Cicilline said the number of foreclosed properties that can be helped will depend on how many people use the program.
To qualify, potential homeowners cannot earn more than $87,840 in a family of four, or 120 percent of the median income in the area. They also will have to be able to put 20 percent down on the foreclosed property.
Zero-interest loans for repairs and renovations will range from $50,000 for single family properties to $100,000 for three or four-family houses.
The home across from Levy had belonged to a woman who raised seven children plus grandchildren and great-grandchildren over more than 30 years. Before she died, the woman sold the home to a grandson, but he fell behind on payments. The bank foreclosed on the property last year, Levy said.
The nonprofit Providence Revolving Fund plans to buy and renovate the home, then sell it through the city’s new program.
Levy said she hoped the new owners would be friendly. She said she became accustomed to looking out and seeing her former neighbors.
“They were like family,” she said. (AP)
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