California is giving first time homebuyers up to $150K of down payments. The “Dream for All '' program will use a lottery system to determine who gets the free money and California residents with moderate income (that is people making less than $287K a year in Santa Clara county) have until April 29th, 2024 to register for the lottery. This down payment will need to be paid back when the house is later sold or transferred and if there’s any capital gain, the government will take a percentage of the gain.
California housing has become so expensive that the solution the government comes up with is to run a lottery so a very small number of people can afford buying homes through this program!!! Wouldn’t this push the already unaffordable house prices even more unaffordable? Wouldn’t this be easily abused that rich international parents can have their young adult children enter this lottery to get $150K downpayment for free? (The lottery winners have to be first generation homeowners in America and there doesn’t appear to have any citizenship/green card requirements so I suppose foreign born individuals with no PR/citizenship will qualify while US citizens whose parents own homes in America will not!!!) California is already running at a budget deficit and is cutting budgets on public universities and climate programs. I don’t understand why this is a good idea to give benefits to a very select few while potentially making houses more expensive for the rest.
California is a gigantic state. When I drive around, I see a lot of empty land. There’s definitely room to build more housing but instead of focusing on that, California’s housing solution is this “Dream for All” lottery? I can’t believe it.
