District erases aid to help teachers find homes

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Friday, June 30, 2006 | 7:35 a.m.

The Clark County School District's widely trumpeted Coming Home project, designed to help teachers become homeowners, has been suspended because the district could not afford the staff to run it.

"We need bus drivers and food service workers more than we need to help a handful of teachers get home loans right now," said Clark County Schools Superintendent Walt Rulffes. "I want us to focus on raising teacher salaries so they can spend the money any way they want, instead of us telling them what they can do with it."

Officials had hoped the program would make it easier to recruit desperately needed teachers to Clark County by helping them enter the real-estate market.

But the program, which was launched in October, has assisted fewer than two dozen teachers buying homes by helping them navigate the mortgage, home search and purchase process.

George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the School District, said she was "very disappointed" the project had not made more strides.

"I thought this was our answer" in helping teachers buy homes, Rice said. "But we're not letting it get us down. We're looking at other ways to address the teacher housing situation."

The project's high expectations were thwarted by the harsh realities of the Southern Nevada real estate market, teacher pay scales and the quirks inherent to many federal and state grant programs.

Several hundred teachers have gone through the workshops required to apply for home-buying assistance. Sue Phillips, who coordinated the district's end of the project before being reassigned by Rulffes to support employee recruiting, said she knew of about 15 teachers who had successfully qualified for mortgages and purchased homes.

"We were really starting to pick up steam," Phillips said. "We discovered teachers who earn too little to purchase a home through traditional means but make too much money to qualify for assistance. The (Welcome Home) team's been brainstorming and coming up with alternative ideas to help."

Touted as a collaborative effort by real estate companies, mortgage lenders and nonprofit agencies, the Coming Home project is "under redevelopment," according to the district's Web site. Workshops scheduled for May and June were canceled.

Pam Malloy, a Realtor with Century 21 Money World, said her experience with the project was generally positive. Of the four teachers she has worked with since December, three have purchased homes, Malloy said.

The teachers ranged in experience from two years to 15 years.

One of the problems, Malloy said, was that some teachers showed up for the workshops without fully understanding that it was essentially a grant program - with all of the accompanying paperwork.

"They felt there were a lot of hoops they had to jump through," Malloy said. "It can be frustrating when you're being asked to send in duplicate information and fill out lots of forms over and over."