We cannot thank you enough for making Investor Briefing 2019 our most successful one yet. Because you helped us spread the word on social media, signed up to attend or both, we had a record number of sponsors - including champion sponsors Google and Silicon Valley Bank - and over 600 people at the event!

A short walk from our office in downtown San Jose is North San Pedro Apartments, which had a groundbreaking celebration this past Friday.

Featured speakers included elected officials and others who helped move this project over a period of years - including State Senator Jim Beall, County of Santa Clara Supervisor Cindy Chavez, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Councilmember Raul Peralez and Housing Director Jacky Morales-Ferrand and others.  The project will feature 135 homes - including 55 units of permanent supportive 

Housing Trust provided First Community Housing with a liquidity line to give FCH greater capacity in working on different developments simultaneously. The other FCH endeavor the liquidity line is assisting is the project Leigh Avenue - which had its own groundbreaking on February 1. 

The project had to secure a number of funding sources - and took a lot of love and teamwork to get to the construction phase. North San Pedro is also another win for Measure A - the affordable housing bond championed by Santa Clara County and passed by voters in 2016. 

A sunny afternoon through some pretty backroads brought us to the home of Edgar and Gema - and their three children - in Gilroy.

Bay Area natives Edgar and Gema were often renting in places they didn't enjoy while they both worked - he in tech, she in healthcare -  and saved for a down payment on their own home. That mission was made difficult by rising home prices and the bite of paying off student loans. Buying a home in the Bay Area seemed so unlikely Edgar considered trying for a job transfer out of the area. 

They learned about Housing Trust Silicon Valley's Homebuyer Empowerment Loan Program (HELP) in a story published last summer by the San Jose Mercury News focused on the Empower Homebuyers SCC program - also administered by Housing Trust. 

After working with Housing Trust's homeownership team the family began looking for homes - and eventually finding one they were happy with in Gilroy that gave the kids their own rooms.

Owning their own home has has been good for the family, Edgar told us. "There is a peace of mind here. You are not paying rent for someone else's mortgage, you're paying your mortgage on your own home. I almost didn't think owning a house was possible."  

For more information about HELP, click here. To learn about Empower Homebuyers SCC - the 2016 Measure A funded down payment assistance program created by the County of Santa Clara and administered by Housing Trust, click here.