What is the Community Housing Trust?
The Community Housing Trust (CHT) is a program that helps people with modest incomes buy their first homes. It helps reduce the barriers to home ownership like high purchase price, the cash needed payment and closing costs, the burden of other debt or insufficient income. The CHT uses subsidies from state or federal programs to significantly reduce the purchase price and operating costs of CHT homes, making them extremely affordable.
Goals of the CHT Program
The CHT program has four important goals:
- Help renters buy well-built, affordable housing that allows them to build wealth.
- Ensure that CHT homes remain permanently affordable to future generations of home buyers.
- Maximize the use of the valuable housing subsidies that make CHT homes affordable.
- Build high quality, energy-efficient homes that will be assets for the community.
How is a CHT Home Different from Other Homes?
Most home owners buy both their house and the land underneath it. This gives them the full rights and responsibilities of ownership, but often at a very high cost.
A CHT homebuyer buys only the house. The land is leased from INHS under a very affordable 99-year lease. This reduces the initial purchase price because the land is not included. More importantly, subsidies provided by INHS are used to significantly lower the purchase price of the house. CHT homes are sold at prices that are up to 50% below market value.
In exchange for the opportunity to buy a home at an affordable price, each CHT home buyer agrees to limit the amount of profit that she or he can take from the home when it is sold. If the resale price rises moderately, a CHT buyer keeps all of the increase. However, when the resale price rise rapidly, the CHT buyer keeps only a portion of the increase and the remainder stays in the house, ensuring it remains affordable.
Benefits of the CHT Program
CHT homeowners are part of a growing national movement to create permanently affordable housing. All homes in the CHT program are built to high standards that make them energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable. INHS builds homes that are EnergyStar and LEED-certified, ensuring low utility and maintenance costs.