FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Central Coast, CA, June 21, 2022 – This June, People’s Self-Help Housing (PSHH) is recognizing National Home Ownership Month. This year marks the 20th anniversary of this annual amplification of the benefits of home ownership and the work that remains to achieve fairness and equity in access to affordable home ownership.
PSHH’s Home Ownership program has been assisting low-income families with the construction of new homes through the mutual self-help method, which sees teams of ten households building together alongside professional tradespeople under the supervision of PSHH staff. The program reduces costs to the future homeowners by 20-25% and sees each team contributing about 2,000 hours of construction labor – “sweat equity”, which acts as the down payment for their house. The program also offers homebuyer education, mortgage counseling and specialized construction training at no cost to the participating families.
Owning a home is traditionally one of the best ways to build wealth. However, this gateway to financial opportunity for many households remains out of reach. Through the ‘sweat equity’ model, PSHH has been building alongside families for over fifty years and has seen generations of owner builders move from poverty to prosperity.
“National Home Ownership Month provides an important opportunity for our community to renew the commitment to providing sustainable home ownership for individuals and families throughout the Central Coast.” said Sheryl Flores, Vice President of Home Ownership “Here at People’s Self-Help Housing, we remain committed to enhancing our programs to further promote access and equity in home ownership, particularly for underserved communities.”
Through their Home Ownership program, PSHH is working on plans to build 10 new two-story homes in Nipomo and 15-single story homes in San Miguel. All homes will have attached two-car garages, PV Solar, and energy-efficient design. Their team anticipates that applications for both developments will be available in late 2022.
To learn more about People’s Self-Help Housing and their Home Ownership program, visit pshhc.org.
About People’s Self-Help Housing (PSHH)
With nearly 1,000 units of new housing in its pipeline and founded in 1970, PSHH is the longest-serving nonprofit affordable housing organization on the Central Coast. Our mission of building homes and providing services to strengthen communities and change lives, sees us serving low-income households, families, farmworkers, seniors, and veterans. We also provide welcoming environments for those living with disabilities, youth transitioning out of foster care, and the formerly homeless. Home ownership opportunities through a self-help, “sweat-equity” program have created over 1,200 homes and with a presence in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Monterey counties, PSHH manages over 2,000 rental units, and employs over 200 members of staff. PSHH acknowledges the indigenous people of the territories that our organization occupies, including the Chumash, Salinan, Yokuts, Kitanemuk, and Tataviam people. To read the full land acknowledgement, visit pshhc.org/IDEA. For more information about the organization, visit pshhc.org, email info@pshhc.org or phone (805) 781-3088.
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Media Contact: communications@pshhc.org, (805) 548-2340
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