Editorial: Homes for new teachers

Sunday, July 2, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.

New teachers coming into the Clark County School District can still receive advice about buying a home, even though district officials have suspended workshops that for the past few months have made it easier for them to understand the process and apply for financial assistance.

Hundreds of new teachers attended the "Coming Home" workshops, which started last fall as a recruiting program. Housing prices are slowly dropping in the Las Vegas Valley, but they can initially seem prohibitive for new teachers or those who have been in the district for only a short while.

District officials said the workshops were suspended because fewer than two dozen teachers actually followed through and made purchases through the Coming Home program. In our view, however, any new program takes a while to gather steam. We hope the School District revives the workshops in time to assist teachers arriving for the fall semester.

In the meantime, the district's Coming Home Web site - www.ccsd.net/employees/home - still lists numerous screened professionals willing to advise teachers looking for a home. In addition to running the numbers to determine which price range teachers qualify for, the professionals can offer advice about financial aid programs available through the federal, state and city governments.

Buying a home and applying for aid means lots of paperwork, but with advisers in the wings and the prospect of home ownership in the offing, we believe many more teachers could find the program worthwhile.

The district went to a lot of work assembling a lineup of mortgage companies, credit unions, counselors and Realtors. We would hope that this program would not fall into disuse just because the workshops have been suspended.