Henrico supervisors approve home purchase assistance program for employees
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The Henrico Board of Supervisors June 13 voted unanimously to approve an ordinance that will create the Henrico County Home Purchase Assistance Program.
The program will offer forgivable loans of as much as $25,000 of assistance to eligible county and school board employees, as well as county constitutional officers, in purchasing their first primary residences, provided they are within Henrico County. It is expected to begin accepting applications sometime this fall.
The assistance will be subject to the Virginia Housing and Development Authority’s caps on household income and sales price (shown below).
“There are very specific eligibility criteria that has to be met and there are specific asset limitations to make sure people are using their resources, should they have them,” explained Henrico Community Revitalization Director Eric Leabough, who will administer the program.
Leabough explained that the program was meant to help with the recruitment and retention of county employees and said that the county would record a deed of trust requiring the employee to stay for five years in order to qualify for full loan forgiveness.
For each year an employee remains with the county, the loan amount will be reduced by one-fifth, he said. An employee who receives a loan but is not employed by the county for the full five years would have to repay the remaining loan amount, he said.
Henrico becomes the first Central Virginia locality to implement such a program, versions of which have been implemented in Northern Virginia.
