IHDA has released funds to support employer-assisted housing programs
In a small but groundbreaking move to ease traffic and reward middle-income workers, the state will match the money companies give employees to help them buy homes near their jobs.
A total of $268,000 -- enough to help about 100 people -- will be awarded under the program starting this summer. But state lawmakers are considering sweetening the pot with more cash.
Businesses have been slow to embrace employer-assisted housing. Nationwide, only 6 percent of employers offer mortgage help and 3 percent give cash for down payments, the Society for Human Resource Management says. But those who try it have been impressed witht he results.
Syed Quadri hated the 90 minutes he spent driving to and from work each day, but he couldn't afford to live near his job at a smoke-detector factory in far west suburban St. Charles.
That changed when his employer offered him $5,000 for a down payment on a house. The only restrictions were that he live within 15 miles of System Sensor Inc. and stay with the company for five years.
Now his drive to work takes less than five minutes.
"We are enjoying life. This is a nice, nice house," said Quadri, a machine operator who moved his family into a four-bedroom colonial in Geneva last May. "I'm saving time as the gas prices go higher."
Twenty-one of Quadri's co-workers have bought homes through System Sensor's live-near-work program. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of employees at other Illinois companies might soon join them depending on how much the state antes up.
Come summer, the Illinois Housing Development Authority for the first time will release $268,000 to businesses willing to follow System Sensor's model or create other mortgage-assistance programs for middle-income workers. The money, taken largely from real-estate transfer taxes, should help about 100 people buy houses near their jobs, according to the Metropolitan Planning Council, the Chicago nonprofit group that will oversee the program.