What’s in a name?

A while ago I mentioned an initiative to help home owners facing eviction through repossession to stay in their homes. It’s the brain child of Richard Lo, who put it together under the name Grace Solutions. There’s a website where you can learn a little more about it (www.gracesolutions.org), but essentially the idea is to form a cooperative (a bit like a credit union or an old style building society) in which members (investors) supply the money to buy outright the home of a family facing eviction through repossession. The former owner then rents the home from the cooperative for five years, at the end of which they have the option to move on, continue renting, or buy the home back.

Because the cooperative paid for the house in full there is no mortgage to pay so only the costs  of maintaining the property and running the scheme need to be covered. The rent can therefore be lower than on the general rental market, which helps the former owner get back on their feet quicker. The investors in the cooperative get their money back when the property sells, with their gain coming from any gain in the sale value of the property.

The technicalities are numerous as one should expect with this sort of initiative, but from what I’ve seen so far the scheme looks very promising.

So now I have two questions for you…

What do we call it?

After thinking around a few ideas, our preferred name is ‘Home Savers Trust’ but we want to test it on ‘real’ people. Just click on the answer(s) that most closely correspond with what you think below. (You can only vote once.)

 

Where would you go to find advice if you were facing eviction?

Please tick all that apply. (Again, you can only vote once.)

 

Thanks very much! I’ll let you know how we get on.

In the mean time, if you’d like to know more about the initiative, or you’d like to help out, please get in touch!

(ps I got the image from this post on the American site b2bbuzz.org)