NIRPC joins down payment assistance initiative

Buying a home could get easier in Northwest Indiana following action by the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission’s executive board on Thursday.

The agency reached across the state to join with the Fort Wayne Housing Authority to participate in the Hoosier Homes Homebuyer Assistance Program.

The program offers up to 5% down payment assistance for buyers with incomes up to 140% of the area’s median income.

There’s no cost to NIRPC for the program; it’s being administered by the Fort Wayne Housing Authority. The down payment assistance is funded through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other agencies.

Valparaiso Councilman Robert Cotton, who was a driving force behind this NIRPC move, said after the meeting he heard from detractors who say they didn’t need help to buy a home back in the day. But times have changed.

“Back in those days, houses were being built for the middle income as well,” he said, but now builders are focused on housing at the upper end of the price range, where profits are higher.

“That’s a way of eliminating the middle class if, in fact, we leave that to the market,” Cotton said.

“People’s thinking tends to revert to poverty and poor folks,” Cotton said, for programs like this. At the NIRPC meeting, Lake County Commissioner Randy Niemeyer asked for clarification, initially believing it was for people up to 140% of the poverty line. Instead, it’s for 60% to 140% of median income.

“Sixty-seven percent of us fall within that range in Valpo,” Cotton said.

The Paradise Homes initiative in Valparaiso is for people earning between 60% and 140% of median income, Cotton said, so the initiative NIRPC joined is more generous.

The Hoosier Homes program works as an intermediary between Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others to help with the capital stack needed to purchase a home, he explained.

“We haven’t heretofore seen fit to incentivize development in the middle income” range, he said, despite tax breaks awarded to developers building high-end homes.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/20/nirpc-joins-down-payment-assistance-initiative/

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