Hertzberg Proposal Would Help Teachers Buy Homes

Unveiling a new education initiative, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg on Friday proposed tapping the city’s housing trust fund to assist teachers in buying a home near where they work.

In a letter to the president of United Teachers Los Angeles, Hertzberg said his program would be modeled after a similar effort to help teachers buy homes in San Jose, one of the state’s most expensive areas.

“Teachers, students and our public schools benefit when teachers are able to live in the communities where they teach,” Hertzberg wrote to UTLA President John Perez.

Hertzberg said his program would offer full-time teachers up to $20,000 in a zero-interest loan to help them make a down payment on a home in the community where they teach.

To receive the assistance, educators would have to agree to continue teaching for at least five years. Repayment of the loan would be deferred for up to 30 years.

If he is elected to the city’s highest office, Hertzberg said, he would also work with private lenders to try to reduce down payments and mortgage rates so teachers could afford to buy a home.

Hertzberg said an existing city program to help educators become homeowners is complicated and restrictive, and has aided only a few teachers.

The San Jose program issues loans up to $40,000, Hertzberg said, and has helped nearly 500 teachers.

The former Assembly speaker from Sherman Oaks said Los Angeles should take $5 million a year from its housing trust fund to provide the loans.

Hertzberg’s proposal quickly got caught up in the controversy over his call to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, into smaller, neighborhood-centered districts.

That proposal, which Hertzberg made last month, infuriated the powerful teachers union.

“We think Mr. Hertzberg’s educational idea is off-base,” Perez said. “He would do the children of this community more good by encouraging the district to break up its bureaucracy.”

Perez did not react warmly Friday to Hertzberg’s latest idea. “His proposals are his proposals,” Perez said. “We’re going to be with Antonio Villaraigosa from the beginning to the end of the campaign.”

UTLA also endorsed Villaraigosa, an Eastside councilman and former teachers union organizer, in his unsuccessful mayoral bid four years ago.

The subject of helping police officers, firefighters and teachers buy homes in Los Angeles will probably be an issue in coming months as Mayor James K. Hahn seeks a second term against a field of candidates that includes Hertzberg, Villaraigosa, Councilman Bernard C. Parks and state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley).