Housing alliance receives award for helping disabled

Some people with disabilities spend their entire lives renting an apartment or sharing a group home. Less than 1 percent of people with disabilities own their own homes, as opposed to 66 percent of all Americans, according to the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community.\nThe Back Home in Indiana Alliance, coordinated by IU's Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, is working to change that. And the program has received high marks for its efforts; the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently named it the "Best of the Best" in terms of housing programs.\nThe alliance was one of three projects in the state to earn the title, and one of 100 programs of more than 2,800 nominated nationwide.\n"They're our success stories at using HUD assistance for innovative programs that revitalize communities and bring new opportunities to American families," said HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo. "By honoring their efforts, we help communities across the nation learn from each other."\nThe program assists individuals with homeownership through low-interest loans, down payment assistance and home modification funding. The only criteria to apply is that the person have a disability as defined under the guidelines set by the Americans with Disabilities Act.\nSo far, the Alliance has helped six people with disabilities obtain their own homes, and a number of others are in the process of applying for loans, said Project Coordinator Deborah McCarty.\n"It's a piece of the puzzle in figuring out how do you assure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities that most of us really expect in our lives," she said. \nOne of those opportunities is choosing where and with whom to live.\n"Overall, there's a movement to have people have more individual options in terms of living and support services," McCarty said.\nShe said HUD recognized the Alliance because the program is new and it is a unique partnership of various organizations.\nThe Alliance allocates housing funding available through HUD and the Indiana Housing and Finance Authority (HFA). It also acts as a link between neighborhood housing organizations and people with disabilities who often are not aware of their services.\n"I think it's a tremendous opportunity for different agencies that all serve the same population of people with disabilities to be able to come together and share resources and come up with ways to overcome barriers these people have encountered with regards to housing," said Jennifer Boehm, director of marketing and public affairs for the HFA.\nThese services are valuable for people with disabilities because mortgage and loan companies are often unwilling to "take a chance" on them, said Melissa Downton, a member of the Alliance's steering committee and program development director at Key Consumer, a self-advocacy organization for people with disabilities.\nDownton herself knows the struggles people with disabilities face when trying to own a home. She and her husband, a Vietnam veteran with a disability, were recently able to purchase their own home through an arrangement with their landlord.\n"It's a really great feeling to be able to own something instead of just paying the rent every month for nothing," she said.\nThe Alliance has also coordinated projects with the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Indianapolis.