From Deseret News archives:
Lawmakers want to make homebuying easier for teachers
Rep. Lynn Hemingway, D-Salt Lake City, wants to make buying a home more affordable for new teachers. Hemingway is sponsoring a bill that would give teachers in their first five years of teaching $15,000 loans to buy homes. Teachers would pay interest on the loans, but the $15,000 principal would be forgiven if they met the requirement of teaching in the same district.
Teachers who taught in the same district or charter school for five years would have $5,000 forgiven.
Hemingway says the bill might be a long shot given the state's budget problems — the bill has failed the past two years. Last year, the bill failed to advance after some lawmakers complained it wouldn't be fair to reward teachers and not other government employees with loans.
However, he's hopeful his colleagues will be supportive of it this year as a way to jump start the economy.
"If they really want to stimulate the real estate market, this is certainly not a bad way to do it," Hemingway said. "On a teacher's salary, it's very difficult to save enough money for a down payment."
If it becomes law, Hemingway's bill could help teachers like Jimmy Barton, a social studies teacher at Bingham High School. He said his family is eager to move out of its apartment and into a $167,000 Riverton home.
"If it wasn't being foreclosed upon, we would never be able to afford this house," Barton said.
Barton said $15,000 might not have helped him buy a home two years ago when home prices were skyrocketing, but now that home prices have dropped, $15,000 would probably help a lot of teachers, he said. He said raises given to teachers by the state in recent years have also helped.
"The downturn has really helped us out," Barton said. "We have new teachers at my school that would love to get into a home."
One teacher, Kevin Moritz, said home loans would encourage teachers to stay in their jobs. Turnover among new teachers is one of the most pressing issues faced by Utah schools.
More than half of Utah teachers who left teaching in 2006-07 had taught for five years or less, according to a 2007 report by University of Utah professor David Sperry.
Mortiz said home prices are still unaffordable for him.
"Getting an education degree is not that easy," said Moritz, who earned a master's degree in education. "You get out (of school), you finally get a job and you can't afford with the money you make to buy a house."
