Mi Casa
WISH LIST: $25: paints a wall in a refurbished home; $50: installs a kitchen cabinet; $100: tiles a small room; $250: replaces an inefficient or broken window
In 1993, a five-member, low-income Latino family achieved a long-awaited goal: the purchase of their own home. The catalyst was Mi Casa, which has gone on to help over 700 people find affordable housing in the Columbia Heights, Petworth, Shaw neighborhoods, and beyond. Mi Casa purchases abandoned or deteriorating housing—often from the Home Again Program— renovates it, and then re-sells it at reasonable rates to low-income, first-time buyers. Families wait 8 to 12 months while Mi Casa works with other service organizations to provide financial education and to connect buyers with potential lenders. Increasingly, Mi Casa also works with tenant groups and community organizations that want to purchase their own buildings, helping them to organize and rehabilitate their properties, and maintaining affordability in neighborhoods rapidly undergoing gentrification. One of the most efficient developers of affordable housing in the city and one of the only bilingual organizations of its kind, Mi Casa has taken the lead in addressing what the US Civil Rights Commission called one of the principle problems facing Latinos in the United States. You can take the lead too and help families realize their dream of home ownership.
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