Forget stock options. Some employers are handing out down payments

San Mateo County social worker Aldo Quintero and his wife Liza make respectable salaries in their regime jobs but in a region with a median home price of million and a county where the figure reaches million a home for the couple and their two kids in the locality they serve was out of reach For years Quintero commuted an hour-plus across the Bay from Hayward and though they later discovered a small rental in the San Mateo County town of Belmont their pay wasn t enough for them to afford a home of their own Even as I got raises and better-paying jobs it s like I couldn t catch up to where prices were revealed Quintero who earns not including benefits Each year the Quinteros entered a plan sponsored by the county for its employees a lottery awarding loans of up to toward the purchase of a home in San Mateo County In they won Along with the loan they scraped together their savings plus money from their family to put in an offer of for a two-bedroom one-bath condo in Foster City just a -minute drive from work and their children s school We got used to these hour-long commutes and now that we don t have to do that it s such a privilege Quintero announced We have so much more time to spend on other things Employee housing stipends have long been a feature of high-paying jobs in the corporate world but the middle-income workers educating children repairing roads and working in hospitals often must look far from where they work to find a home they can afford to rent let alone buy To give their employees a fighting chance in the housing sphere a few local governments universities and hospitals are offering down payment assistance as an employee benefit These loans can be an opportunity for social workers city planners and teachers to put down roots in the communities where they work rather than having to choose between punishing commutes from the exurbs or leaving the Bay Area altogether to afford a home Down payment assistance allows middle-income families to be part of the wealth building of the society noted Julie Mahowald CFO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley a nonprofit that provides down payment assistance to low-income households in Alameda and Contra Costa County People aren t as transient they re not driving as far and they re not coming to work exhausted Aldo Quintero with his wife Liza and children Isabella and Mateo at their home in San Mateo Calif on Monday April Quintero is an employee of San Mateo County who was able to use the county s help to afford a down payment on a home Jane Tyska Bay Area News Group For those without access to a loan from the Bank of Mom and Dad stocks to cash out or lottery winnings it can take years to save up for a down payment in the Bay Area For a traditional down payment on a median-priced home of million a family would need plus more for closing costs Even with that payments on a fixed-rate -year mortgage at the current average of would still cost a month plus property taxes By increasing the down payment amount a mortgage can become somewhat more manageable For employers helping their workers find stable housing is also a matter of retention In San Mateo County commute time is among the top reasons workers cite for leaving It s exponentially harder to find employees to move to this area because of the high cost of living or even to commute because of traffic revealed Mike Callagy San Mateo County Executive As a large employer in the county we have to be creative in finding solutions to incentivize people to move here Preponderance loans come with low interest rates that need not be paid back until the property is sold or the employee leaves Particular down-payment programs are catered to certain types of employees Educators in San Francisco can apply to get a loan of up to Kaiser Permanente offers up to to newly-hired physicians And union-affiliated employees in Sonoma County can apply for up to toward a home in the county Plenty of Bay Area universities have long offered a housing stipend to incoming faculty which functions as a sign-on bonus rather than a loan At UC Berkeley new professors typically receive around but can go up to in special circumstances At Stanford professors are eligible for up to in housing assistance paid out over years The benefit does not need to be repaid but it is taxed Chosen economic research has questioned whether homebuyer assistance by just infusing more money into a housing realm with tight supply in fact counterproductively increases housing prices But Ben Harris vice president of economic studies at the Brookings Institution noted that too scant people are likely taking advantage of down payment assistance to significantly increase prices locally and their impact is also diluted when the supply of homes increases It s not an either-or situation Harris disclosed You can expand the supply of homes while also subsidizing the purchase of them Particular local governments are doing just that This year teachers began moving into a -unit rental complex built by the San Francisco Unified School District and Mercy Housing in the Outer Sunset as well as a -unit coach housing project The Acacia in Palo Alto For the Quinteros though homeownership has offered more stability than renting They moved with their two young kids three times in the past decade moves that were especially disruptive for their youngest daughter who has autism It s really nice to have a place where she feels secure Quintero disclosed and to know we re not going to have to move to another home or school