Jun. 12—It’s a classic ambition: the desire to own your own white-picket-fenced home — or adobe bungalow, as the case may be.

But, as indelible as homeownership may be to the American Dream, federal policymakers don’t do much to help would-be buyers finance their first home, said Michael Loftin, CEO of Homewise Inc., a nonprofit Santa Fe housing developer.

Rather, federal policy leans toward assisting some low-income families with rent payments — a housing assistance system wrought with its own challenges — while thousands of organizations nationwide take up the work of providing down payment assistance. A federal program granting families the money they need to become homeowners, Loftin said, is “not on the radar.”

That would change under federal legislation U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández introduced Wednesday to help prospective buyers chart a path toward first-time homeownership with one-time, $30,000 grants.

Known as the Home of Your Own Act, the bill would create a new, $6.7 billion-per-year assistance program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, offering funding to first-time buyers who earn 120% of the area’s median income — a sum that, in Santa Fe, would amount to $81,000, according to census data.

A pilot version of the bill’s grant program administered through Homewise is already at work in New Mexico.

In fiscal year 2023, Leger Fernández secured $750,000 in federal Community Project Funding to provide $30,000 homeowner assistance vouchers to 25 families across her district, which includes Northern New Mexico plus a swath of the easternmost part of the state.

The first home purchase financed with one of the grants was finalized earlier this month, Loftin said.

The grant funding, available after participants complete a financial counseling program, could be put toward down payment costs, closing costs, mortgage interest rate reduction or necessary repairs before moving in, Leger Fernández’s bill states. And 3% of the bill’s funding is designated specifically for homeownership grants for tribal house entities.

Nine other Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, have signed on as co-sponsors of the Home of Your Own Act, which also has received endorsements from America’s Credit Unions, the Credit Union Association of New Mexico, the National American Indian Housing Council and Unidos US, among other organizations.

Without Republican backers, however, the likelihood of making the program a reality may be slim in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.

Leger Fernández said she’ll continue to advocate for the bill to become law. She noted homeownership helps families build wealth, stabilize expenses, save for the future and develop healthy communities — economic boosts the congresswoman argued shouldn’t be partisan issues.

“My job is to try to start convincing my colleagues that this is worthwhile,” Leger Fernández said in an interview Wednesday. “I believe that there is not a single district in the country that isn’t facing a homeownership crisis.”

Referring to the pilot program, she added, “This isn’t a pie in the sky. We’re doing it right now.”

Creating such a program nationwide would essentially offer a one-stop-shop for down payment assistance for first-time buyers — and a simpler system for real estate agents and lenders, Loftin said. All of that, he added, “would help a lot of people who can’t get into homeownership get into homeownership.”