(Columbia)-Juan and Rihannon Torres and their three daughters are living the american dream.

Juan said, “Instead of giving my money to someone else, it’s going to my house now.”

The torres’ just moved into their new 4 bedroom, two and half bath home in Northeast Columbia.

As first time homeowners, the family says they couldn’t have done it without a program called “Enfoque Financiero.”

Rihannon Torres said, “We were kind of hoping to own one, but not as soon as we did.”

It was designed by Community Assistance Provider, Incorporated to help latino families become
homeowners.

Tanya Rodriguez Hodges said, “We find that so often people move here to South Carolina and don’t realize the benefit of homeownership as opposed to renting.”

Rodriguz Hodges is CEO of Latino Communications. She manages the 8-week bilingual course the family took.

She said, “We teach them finanical literacy from opening a checking account to homeownership.”

It’s all free.

Juan Torres said, “They did teach us a lot of stuff from how to fix our credit report and who to call and what to talk to to them about.”

Program officials say this program also protects Latino families from predatory lending scams.

Rodriguez Hodges said, “We had several people that come to our office and said I’ve signed a contract for 99 years at this interest rate. It balloon in two years, and they didn’t know any better because everything was in English.”

It’s knowledge this family appreciates because now, they have a place to call their own.

Juan Torres said, “Look what it did for us. It was pretty quick. We took the class did what we needed to do and here we are.”

For more information about this program, call Latino Communications at (803)865-6690.

You can also visit www.latinocommunications.org.

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Fast track leads to house

Program helps Hispanics achieve homeownership

By KRISTY EPPLEY RUPON – krupon@thestate.com

Rhiannon Torres had a plan for her family when they moved to Columbia last year.

They would live in their apartment for five or six years — saving as much money as they could — and then they would buy their first home.

But things don’t always go according to plan.

A new program targeting Hispanics for homeownership put the Torres family on the fast track. Two weeks ago, Torres and her husband, Juan, and three of their young children moved into a four-bedroom, 1,850-square-foot home in Northeast Richland .

“I look around sometimes, and I’m just like, ‘Wow,’” said 24-year-old Torres, who had never lived in a house.

She and her husband, bought the house after completing the Enfoques en Financiero (Focus on Finances) program sponsored by Community Assistance Provider, a nonprofit housing assistance group, and Latino Communications, a language translation company.

“They teach you a lot of good stuff,” said Torres, who was hesitant to participate when her mother-in-law, Maritsa Torres, first told her about it.

With three young children at home and both she and her husband working full time, Torres didn’t think they had time.

But the program is built to help families navigate those obstacles. The eight-week course is held every Sunday afternoon. The whole family is invited. The children are taken care of. A meal is served.

The first few classes, the Torreses were still skeptical. “It seems too good to be true,” she said.

But as they started gathering helpful hints like how to clear up mistakes on their credit reports and monitor them for accuracy, their interest started to build.

Before long, Torres had a new mission for her family. By the time the class ended in December, they were ready to start their home search.

“She took the program and ran with it,” said Juan Torres, who was born in Puerto Rico and moved to El Paso , Texas , with his father, who was in the military. “She got results right away.”

The Torres family looked at about 50 homes. “I wanted all of them,” said Rhiannon Torres, who was born and raised in El Paso and married Juan there in 2002. But they held out until they found something to suit their specific needs.

Their home is in The Summit, halfway between his job in Lugoff and hers on Two Notch Road . It has four bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms, a fenced backyard, a large kitchen and living area and a two-car garage.

Torres is impressed by the small things:

• The deep laundry closet that is upstairs with the bedrooms. “I have a lot of laundry to do.”

• The new wood floors in the living area

• The spacious kitchen with blue countertops that hide the Kool-Aid stains

• The garage Juan can use as his workshop area to escape a house full of women

Torres also was surprised at how affordable homeownership is.

Their mortgage payment for the $132,000 house is $880 per month. The monthly rent on their three-bedroom apartment was $780 and set to increase at the next lease renewal to $860.

The Torres family — like other first-time home buyers in the program — qualified for $24,000 in down-payment assistance to buy the home and had to put down less than $3,000 in upfront costs.

The two-year program — paid for by grants totaling $100,000 from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation and the Sisters of Charity — has eight areas of focus, from learning the differences between owning and renting to avoiding predatory lending, said Veronica Rodriguez, president and chief executive of Community Assistance Provider.

The class has been popular, Rodriguez said. Eighteen people participated in the first session, and three already are in the process of buying a home. There are 35 people in the second class, which is almost complete. And there is a waiting list for the third session, which will get under way in Lexington County in April.

“I definitely recommend it,” Rhiannon Torres said.

She is thankful that her children will grow up in a big house in a safe neighborhood instead of a cramped apartment like she did.

“This will be their memories,” Torres said. “They won’t have to remember being crowded up in an apartment.

“It’s a great feeling.”

Reach Rupon at (803) 771-8308.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Enfoques en Financiero (Focus on Finances) is a new program targeting those in the Hispanic community for homeownership. It is being sponsored by Community Assistance Provider and Latino Communications. Here are the details:

Next session: Starts in April in Lexington County Who is eligible: The information is free to anyone. Down payment assistance through the program is available to individuals and families who can qualify for financing and provide documentation that they are legal residents of the United States .

What to expect: The eight-week program meets every Sunday afternoon, and the whole family is invited. Child care and a meal are provided during each session. Materials are printed in English and Spanish. Each session has a different focus from learning how to read and clean up your credit report to what to expect at the closing.

How to get involved: Call Latino Communications at (803) 865-6690

Homeownership assistance: If you are not interested in the program, but need help with buying a home, call Community Assistance Provider, which also provides individual homeownership counseling to anyone in its 15-county Midlands service area and down payment assistance programs to those who qualify under income guidelines. The number is (803) 699-9766.

The nonprofit housing assistance group recently built seven new homes in the Arthurtown community; two are still available for $98,000. With $24,000 in subsidies, a family could move into one of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom brick homes with a $74,000 mortgage.

LESSONS LEARNED

Rhiannon Torres learned how to put her family on the fast track to homeownership — and some other important lessons — through the program. Here are a few tips:

• Look for programs to provide financial assistance. The Enfoques en Financiero program helped her family with down payment assistance that got them into a home five years faster than they anticipated.

• Take a look at your credit. The Torreses had some mistakes on their credit reports that could have cost them. Sometimes all it takes is notifying the credit bureaus in writing and the mistakes can be corrected. Torres said she will be monitoring their credit yearly.

• Write down what you spend. The program encouraged the Torreses to write down every expenditure they made to see where they could cut their budget. Torres realized she was buying several movies on DVD every week. She cut it down to one a month and ended up with significant savings.

• Once you buy a home, make sure you have it inspected thoroughly before the closing. The Torreses’ inspection paid off because they found a lot of window locks that were broken throughout the home. Those were fixed by the time they moved in.

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