TCH: Opportunity Fund Grants Available for Rentals & Purchase

04 Mar TCH: Opportunity Fund Grants Available for Rentals & Purchase

The Trust for Community Housing (TCH) awards Housing Opportunity Fund Grants. The organization relies on grassroots support. For more information, please contact: Amy Levek, Executive Director, 970-708-7678, amy@trustforcommunityhousing.org or Katherine Borsecnik, Board Chair, Katherine@trustforcommunityhousing.org

Are you a local worker and looking for help with the costs of securing a rental? The Trust for Community Housing’s Opportunity Fund grant program may be able to help. The program has awarded 21 grants to date, enabling 43 locals to both purchase and cover rental deposits and other costs associated with getting into housing.

TCH recently received a grant from the Colorado Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) to specifically help renters get into housing.

“Thanks to CHFA, we’re able to do more for local renters,” said Amy Levek, TCH Executive Director. “We really appreciate their confidence in our programs.”

TCH’s grants are available for renters to deal with move in costs like deposits, which can sometimes be substantial. Levek elaborated:

“The rental unit does not need to be deed-restricted, but the renter does need to qualify through the San Miguel Regional Housing Authority as an employee working in the region.”

Grants are awarded to qualified workers in the region to help them achieve housing stability. They are designed to enable recipients to stay in Telluride, benefitting the family, their employer, and the local economy, and community. Many of the recipients have been lottery winners for the Town of Telluride’s recent projects and have included on-call employees, artists, retail workers, small business owners, and library workers.

In our current economy, even “affordable” housing can be hard – or even impossible – for employees to afford, due to relatively modest, but still daunting down payments and closing costs. The Housing Opportunity Fund addresses that part of the housing puzzle by providing grants to help qualified local employees actually get into housing.

“I’m so moved by the stories of our recent grantees, what they’ve gone through to secure housing,” says Amy Levek, TCH’s Executive Director. “And even more impressed by what most of them contribute to the community.”

TCH obtains references from grant applicants as well as information on financial need and employment history.

For more information and for applications, please go to the Trust for Community Housing website at www.trustforcommunityhousing.org.

The Trust for Community Housing (TCH) was established as a grass-roots nonprofit (501-c-3) organization to make sure our community remains strong and vital by increasing resources available for affordable housing. TCH is the Telluride region’s only non-profit dedicated specifically to housing and is supported by a broad spectrum of full- and part-time residents who treasure what makes our shared home unique.

TCH’s mission is to preserve our community through increasing regional housing opportunities. Through collaboration with others, the non-profit Trust expands resources available for housing, helping to secure a diverse and vital community.

TCH welcomes support. Visit TCH’s website: www.trustforcommunityhousing.org