A $16.5 million grant designed to help homeowners improve energy efficiency and save money was officially awarded to CRHMFA Homebuyers Fund (CHF) on Sept. 30 by the California Energy Commission (CEC).
The group announced that it had received the award late in November.
CHP spokesperson Carolyn Holmes said CHF is a joint powers authority formed in 1993 with 30 member counties, some of which are Regional Council of Rural Counties members.
In addition to Lake, member counties include Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Glenn, Imperial, Inyo, Lassen, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Modoc, Mono, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Benito, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yuba.
CHP reported that the award will allow it to build an energy efficiency retrofit program that will provide loans and grants to single family residence owners, enabling them to fund energy efficiency improvements to their homes and save them money.
In the process, Holmes said the goal is to create jobs. Over the 30-county area the program is estimated to create 490 jobs in construction, energy efficiency measure installation and verification trades, CHF reported.
CHF estimated that the program will provide more than 1,100 loans and grants to current homeowners and 1,200 additional grants to people purchasing or refinancing a home in conjunction with work done as part of a rehab loan or other energy efficiency mortgage.
The $16.5 million was funded through the California Energy Commission's State Energy Program as part of the federal stimulus American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). CHF is contributing an additional $2 million of its own funds to the grant award, bringing the total available to fund energy efficient retrofit projects to $18.5 million.
“There was a couple of different sources of funding that came down through the state,” said Holmes.
There were federal awards made to other efforts with similar goals, including the PACE program, CaliforniaFIRST and some municipal programs, which Holmes said included assessing tax liens on property in exchange for loans. Holmes said those loans “were put in question for a variety of reasons.”
She said mortgage lenders Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Federal Housing Administration had issues with those tax liens because they followed the properties, not the owners. “That was the main concern and why those awards were canceled.”
The CHF program can assess a lien on the equipment, not the property itself, she said.
“The funding for our program was a separate pool of funding called SEP funds,” said Holmes, explaining that SEP stands for State Energy Program, which comes out of ARRA.
Holmes said interested homeowners should contact CHF, who will put them in touch with a contractor. The projects will be prescreened to determine of the project will end up saving the homeowner.
CHF is starting out with Beutler Corp. as its primary contractor. Holmes said the company assisted with designing the program.
However, the program is aiming to expand to local contractors, Holmes said. Interested contractors can contact CHF, go through a contractor training for energy audits and then take part.
“This program is very focused on what we considered a whole house retrofit,” said Holmes.
It goes well beyond just appliances and weather stripping, and looks at the entirety of the dwelling, including its structure, she said.
A qualified home energy performance rater will audit the home's energy features using specialized equipment that looks at the home's heating and cooling equipment, sealing, duct leakage and insulation, she said.
Holmes said average projects are expected to cost between $8,000 and $10,000.
The program's energy efficiency work will have three levels, Holmes said.
Tiers one and two are things the homeowner and a contractor can do, everything from replacing shower heads to new duct work, Holmes said. Tier three will include full house retrofits.
She said the goal is to find projects that will be affordable and stay as close in cost as possible – if not be less – than the amount of savings the homeowner realizes through the retrofit project. Projects will be picked based on potential savings.
Homeowners with what Holmes called a “pretty wide range of income” are eligible to apply. For Lake County, the minimum income for the person whose name is on the home loan is $28,920 minimum and $77,120 maximum.
Homeowners also can receive grants of up to 15 percent of the project cost, with a maximum of $1,250. CHF also provides grants to help cover energy audits.
The loans are 15-year, 3-percent fixed rates. As an example, for a $10,000 project, minus the $1,250 grant, the remaining $8,750 would cost $60.43 per month to repay over 15 years. Holmes said the goal is that the homeowner would recoup that amount or more in energy savings.
Holmes said CHF has a number of other programs available in Lake County, including two down payment assistance programs, neither of which are limited to first-time homebuyers, as well as grants and loan assistance.
In addition, they are about to launch a mortgage credit certificate program, which will offer a tax credit for first-time homebuyers.
Since its founding, CHF has issued more than $1.8 billion in taxable bonds, $820 million in tax-exempt bonds, provided more than $6 million in grants, and helped nearly 37,000 families and individuals to purchase homes.
For more information, visit www.chfloan.org .
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