L.A. Targeted for Plan to Help Low-Income Home Buyers

Los Angeles is among 50 cities nationwide expected to benefit from a private organization’s plans to help 10,000 low- and moderate-income residents buy houses over the next five years.

The program, announced Tuesday by the nonprofit Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., calls for spending $625 million to locate, renovate and finance homes by working with a national network of community organizations and private financial institutions.

Officials said the program is an extension of urban and rural neighborhood revitalization operations conducted by the corporation’s network of lenders, church groups and other community organizations that help poor people buy homes in more than 350 neighborhoods in the 151 localities with corporation offices.

“We want to help people capitalize on the low interest rates, and with home ownership in decline, we must act now to reverse this trend,” said Bruce Gottschall, executive director of the corporation’s Chicago operation and a co-director of the national campaign.

Twenty cities, including Los Angeles, have been targeted as beneficiaries in the first year of the program, with 30 cities to be added in the second year.

Lori Gay, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Neighborhood Housing Service, said her organization would attempt to raise about $100,000 to help about 30 residents buy houses during the first year.

Program officials said participating community housing groups will work with lenders to help qualify prospective home buyers for near-conventional first mortgages as well as to develop alternative second mortgages that would reduce the buyers’ monthly costs.