In a city where two thirds of all residents are renters and not property owners, officials and others would love to even the score.

To achieve that balance, help is on the way for people interested in achieving that American Dream in the city.

The City Council welcomed Kris Diaz of Hudson United Mortgage to their work session last week. Diaz, accompanied by Deborah Clark and Elena Knowles of Howard Hanna Rand Realty in New Windsor, proposed a series of financial planning workshops and was seeking the city’s help in finding places to conduct these presentations.

“There’s a lot of misconceptions, people don’t really understand the process,” said Diaz, speaking via Zoom. “We will try to simplify it for them.”

The group is hoping to find churches for other community organizations that may be willing to host these workshops.

Diaz said the sessions would not just be for people to meet with realtors and loan officers. The bilingual workshops would offer connections with attorneys as well.

Clark said her group has experts who are proficient in up to six languages. They can assist potential homeowners in building and repairing credit scores.

“We are really there to share knowledge,” Diaz said. “We’re here to volunteer and give back to the community as best we can.”

Council members were receptive to the idea.

“People are still feeling the impact of Urban Renewal that displaced a lot of people, especially African American and Latino,” said Councilman Anthony Grice, who suggested that presenters may want to consider providing nourishment and childcare, since many of the seminar-goers will be people who have just come from a hard day of work.

Councilman Omari Shakur said that crime will decrease if more people have a vested interest in their city.

“You can pay two mortgages with some of the rents that people are paying,” Shakur said. “I wish ten years ago we had this in place, so we could have more community residents have a vested interest in our community.”

Shakur asked what happens after the workshops are completed.

“Once we are done, we will assign an agent to that person,” Clark said. “Agents will follow them through the process.”
Mayor Torrance Harvey said the housing stock in the City of Newburgh is almost completely depleted. He added that 65 percent of all city residents are homeowners while the remaining 35 percent are renters. He would like to equalize those groups.

“People treat their properties differently when they own it,” Harvey said. “I’m a living testament to that.”