TAHOE CITY, Calif. — Nearly a half million dollars in down payment assistance funds are still available to Eastern Placer workers looking to buy a home in the North Lake Tahoe region.

The Workforce Housing Preservation Program helps local workers secure housing with up to $150,000 in down payment assistance or to complete renovations. The program pays homebuyers up to 16% of the purchase price in exchange for deed restricting their home so that it can only be occupied by local workers. This financial assistance does not need to be paid back. The deed restriction runs with the land for 55 years and auto-renews with each sale or transaction of the property.

“Our local workers struggle to find affordable housing and many have to commute from Reno to work here,” said Placer Community Development Resource Agency Assistant Director Crystal Jacobsen. “So our goal is to create a secondary market of local worker housing and ensure that these homes will be here for many years for our local workforce.”

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Homes considered for the program must be in unincorporated eastern Placer County. Homebuyers must have a minimum of 4% of the sale price available as a down payment. At least one household member must be currently employed full-time at an employment site within the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District geographical boundary.

“One of the challenges here is to find something you think you can stretch to afford,” said WHPP applicant Brandon “DJ” Ewan in a recent video interview. “And what I quickly learned was that there aren’t many homes that come on the market in that price range. When they did, they were disappearing so quickly. The Workforce Housing Preservation Program definitely gave us more room to move, more purchasing power.”

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Learn more and apply for the Workforce Housing Preservation Program online here or fill out an application in person at the Community Development Resource Agency office in Tahoe City or Auburn.

Watch the video interview with Brandon “DJ” and Lichelle Ewan here.