How the Madison-based organization OWN It inspires residents to build and share wealth

OWN It has raised more than $500,000 to help Brown and Black neighborhoods in the Madison area build wealth through homeownership.

Working with One City Schools, the organization offers wealth-building and homeownership courses to students' families. Families who complete the courses can receive downpayment assistance grants of up to $15,000.

OWN It was created in 2020 by cofounders Sara Alvarado and Tiffany Malone as an organization to help first-time, and especially Black and Brown, prospective homeowners who have historically been frozen out of the market. Since April 2021:

• 126 people have participated in the organization's wealth-building courses

• 55 people have participated in homeownership courses

• Ten people were awarded a downpayment assistance grant

• Eight people have purchased a home

To receive assistance from OWN It, you can email info@ownitbbw.com or visit their website ownitbbw.com.

OWN It makes downpayment assistance more accessible

Racially restrictive covenants excluded Black residents from being able to purchase or rent homes in higher-income areas. The Federal Housing Administration's practice of redlining devalued homes and reduced loan access in communities of color. Black veterans were often denied access to VA loans that made homeownership possible for many working-class families. And Black residents were more likely to be targeted for subprime mortgages which led to foreclosures following the 2008 housing crisis.

For people like Alvarado, this history of race-based discrimination is difficult to address without equally targeted solutions. But fair housing law prevents organizations from making race-based decisions.

So the group partnered with a school overwhelmingly represented by Black and Brown parents who are financially responsible but lack the savings to buy a new home.

Those parents were often stymied by complicated grant and financial assistance eligibility requirements. Some have restrictions on where the home is located or require certain energy efficiency or other features. And nearly all have limitations on gross income which can leave many families just out of the range to qualify for assistance.

"The hoops that people have to jump through are ridiculous," Alvarado said.

Alvarado said most nonprofits have a needs-based analysis, which means the needier families are, the more qualified they are for programs. However, she said the best bet for long-term stable homeownership is among those who have steady employment.

"If you think about nurses and teachers who just don’t have the savings, but have everything else, they should be owning homes," she concluded.

Kelsey Glavee, a native of Appleton, is one of those people.

Glavee had never really understood the benefits of owning a home. She had always heard her parents, who would buy a home years down the road, promote the benefits of homeownership. But after growing up in duplexes, she was perfectly happy to rent, living with roommates during college and alone after graduating with a master’s in 2017.

Then, while working as a speech therapist at One City schools, she saw an email advertising OWN It homebuying classes in 2021.

“I thought, ‘oh that’s interesting.’ My parents have been kind of bugging me about this, so maybe I’ll join and learn,“ Glavee, now 29, said.

Glavee said she learned a lot from the organization’s required homeownership and financial literacy classes, and she was surprised when a lender told her she was in good enough shape to start the homeownership process.

Less than a year later, that first step would lead her into owning her first home.

OWN It's new director helps prospective homeowners stay the course

Myesha Thompson, a licensed life insurance and financial coach, is a first-generation homeowner. The Chicago-born college standout worked in financial sectors before taking on the position of executive director at OWN It in January.

In the new role, Thompson finds ways to motivate others to dream outside their circumstances, much as she did. "I didn’t have an example of wealth or even building wealth for my family," she recalled.

Still, Thompson built her home in Madison in 2021 after encountering soaring prices in the housing market. She stayed firm with contractors and lenders on what she wanted, in spite of often feeling pressure from others to make different decisions.

It's one of the ways Thompson said she can relate to many of the families who go through the program's courses.

"That process was very stressful," she said. "It was a constant battle of having to over-advocate for myself, but we see it day-to-day. We have to fight to have access, opportunities, an equal playing field."

Now she wants program participants and other aspiring homeowners to know homeownership is a goal worth fighting for and at OWN It, staff will be in the fight with them.

"Nothing in life worth having is easy," she said. "I got three nos before I got my yes. If homeownership or building wealth for your family is something you desire, you will fight for it. We can want it for you, but you have to want it for yourself just as bad."

Even though she lacked connections in Madison, Glavee said the program helped her build a homebuying team.

“I emailed people in the program, and they were able to get me connected to a lender they knew and trusted,” she said. “I also found a realtor through the course.”

Glavee got lucky; just two weeks after she was ready to start making offers, her realtor alerted her to an off-market home being sold by another realtor in the same company. The home was located right near one of the buildings where Glavee works, One City’s preschool.

The small 1940s-era bungalow was perfect for her and in June 2021, she walked up its concrete steps, keys in hand.

“The day I got my keys was really exciting,” Glavee recalled. “The previous owners were there, and they were giving me some pointers about things around the house. My parents had driven up from North Carolina, and then we started painting right away. It was fun to see everything come together and later, get everything moved in.”

Glavee ultimately received $15,000 from OWN It, helping reduce how long she will have to pay private mortgage insurance on the home.

These days, she said her mortgage is roughly the same amount as her rent.

Looking back, Glavee said she isn’t sure she would have had the courage to make the leap into homeownership without OWN It.

“I’m really grateful for the OWN It program for all the knowledge and financial assistance,” she said. “It pushed me along. I think it’s a really great asset for our community, so I’m glad it exists.”

Founded partly through a social justice-minded inheritance, OWN It continues to inspire giving

As a college-level instructor, Sylvia Turlington O'Neill was very careful with money; so careful, that quite a lot remained even after putting her three children through college alone and living to the age of 92, when she developed lung cancer.

An atypical woman for her time, the Cornell-educated O'Neill had spent her life advocating for women's, gay and civil rights. Likewise, she influenced her daughter Jan to value social justice.

So when a very ill O'Neill asked her daughter Jan what they were going to do with all their money, Jan and her husband knew they wouldn't keep it.

It was a question the couple had already posed when her husband's mother left them a sizeable inheritance:

"He asked me this question: 'do we have enough? Do we need this money for one more thing?'" Jan recalled. "'Do we need another car? Another tractor? Another vacation? Do we need it or do we have enough?' Both of us just woke up and thought, 'woah, we do have enough.'"

Instead, they had partnered with a university and contributed $250,000 to a scholarship fund for Black and Brown teachers, who are disproportionately underrepresented in schools.

And when her mother passed away, Jan -- who had been close friends with Alvarado -- provided seed money for the founding of OWN It.

For her and her mother, it wasn't about being heroes or saviors, it was focused on using intergenerational wealth to address the harm of centuries of disenfranchisement.

"I just feel like I’m fulfilling my mom’s legacy. This is what her whole life was about: empowering others and seeing who has been disenfranchised and what we can do to repair that."

After that, the giving continued.

Kristin Forde, despite a history of unstable housing, bought a home at the age of 39. With little in the way of savings, a son and working three jobs, she had been able to get downpayment assistance through a lender and bought a small house that was in foreclosure.

From there, she worked her way up and eight years later, sold it to move in with her partner. The return, she said, was shocking.

"The market last year was crazy," she recalled. "I made so much money on my house, it felt almost criminal."

She had enough to pay off student loans, her car and pay down the mortgage of their new home -- and have some leftover.

"At first, I was like, Oh my God, I’m going on a shopping spree," she laughed. "I have spent a lot of my life doing work and learning about the history of racism in this country, and there was no way, I couldn’t do it."

Forde heard of Own It through the school her son attended, One City, and decided that was the perfect place for the remaining funds.

"It was a responsibility, and I feel like every white homeowner should be redistributing equity this way, and it feels like one small contribution towards reparations," she said. "I would love to figure out a way to encourage or create motivation and avenues for people to redistribute their earnings, especially (earnings) from inheritance and equity and passive income."

To make a tax-deductible donation to OWN It, you can visit ownitbbw.com/donate or write a check with "OWN IT Downpayment Fund" on the memo line and mail it to One City Schools/OWN IT at 2012 Fisher Street, Madison, WI 53713.

Need more help with housing questions? The Milwaukee Resource Guide is here to help. Have something you want answered? Submit a question.

Talis Shelbourne is an investigative solutions reporter covering the issues of affordable housing and lead poisoning. Have a tip? You can reach Talis at (414) 403-6651 or tshelbourn@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @talisseer and message her on Facebook at @talisseer.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Two years after it began, OWN It is helping Madison build Black wealth