“The California Senate Appropriations Committee advanced a bill to allow undocumented immigrants to make use of the state’s zero down, no payment home ‘loan’ program, an expansion the legislature says would create ‘significant cost pressures,’” reports Center Square.
“The social and economic benefits of homeownership should be available to everyone. As such, the California Dream for All Program should be available to all,” argues the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D). “When undocumented individuals are excluded from such programs, they miss out on a crucial method of securing financial security and personal stability for themselves and their families.”
As Center Square notes,
AB 1840, which already passed the Assembly and now faces a floor vote in the Senate, would prevent the state’s California Dream for All Shared Appreciation Loans program from denying individuals on the basis of their immigration status. This program allows applicants to secure “loans” of up to 20% of the home’s purchase price — or, about what a typical down payment is — with zero down payment on this state loan, and no payments.
The state’s “loan” can potentially be repaid to the state when the home is refinanced, sold, or transferred, with the borrower paying back the original loan amount plus 20% of any increase in value on the property. It’s not clear what happens if a family decides to hold on to a home as there are no provisions on how long a property can be held for, which means certain kinds of trusts could potentially allow the loan to not be paid back.
The Appropriations Committee analysis said expansion would create “unknown significant cost pressures, potentially in the millions annually, to provide additional funding for the Home Purchase Assistance Program to accommodate the expanded eligibility population.”
This year, 18 thousand individuals applied for the $255 million “loan” program through a lottery, leaving 1,700 lucky winners with up to $150,000 each towards down payment and closing costs….[A] home down payment assistance program for less qualified individuals is widely blamed for fueling the housing bubble — by increasing housing prices and decreasing loan recipient quality — that led to the 2007-2008 global financial crisis.
The median home in California costs nearly $1 million and requires a household income of over $200,000, or more than triple the median household income, to afford.
In progressive Oregon, a taxpayer-funded organization offers $30,000 in down payment assistance to new homebuyers — unless they are U.S. citizens. So illegal aliens are eligible for subsidized homes, but U.S. citizens are not.
In Virginia, progressives want to give illegal aliens more access to welfare benefits, and let them vote in state and local elections.
The leading Democratic blog in Virginia, Blue Virginia, recently called for giving illegal aliens more government benefits. It complained that “undocumented immigrants are barred from accessing many of the programs” paid for by taxpayers, such as “Medicaid, FAMIS (Virginia’s CHIP Program), and Affordable Care Act health coverage.” It quoted Freddy Mejia, Policy Director at The Commonwealth Institute, complaining that “undocumented immigrants “face many barriers to … accessing critical resources” paid for by taxpayers. It backed legislation to create a “health coverage program” that undocumented immigrants could benefit from, and lamented that “these efforts were stalled in the House Appropriations Committee,” which was sympathetic to the measure, but could not come up with the funds to pay for it.
Democrat-run California already provides lots of benefits to illegal aliens. It is spending billions of dollars to give many of them free health insurance at taxpayer expense. Economist Daniel Di Martino, who supports expanded legal immigration, warned that California’s action is “turning the country into the world’s welfare magnet. The consequence will be more and, importantly, poorer and older immigrants coming to America.” When Democrat-run Illinois began covering illegal aliens, it cost far more than the state expected, and it had to cap the number of illegal aliens it covered, to keep spending down to $550 million rather than rapidly increasing to over $1 billion.
