| CREDIT REPAIR, DEBT MANAGEMENT, AND BUDGET COUNSELING
The Community Housing Resource Center (CHRC) works with several
Clark County non-profit partners, seven local financial
institutions, and Freddie Mac, one of the nation's largest
residential mortgage investors, to provide an in-depth financial
education program, Credit Smart®, to help low
and moderate income individual and families develop sound money
management skills. The Center is a community based
non-profit organization with more than eleven years experience
in providing housing counseling services in Southwest Washington
State to over 18,000 families. Housing education and
one-on-one counseling is the primary focus of the Center.
Financial education is a critical need
both for consumers and for communities. For consumers,
financial education is the key to building wealth and
assets—regardless of their incomes. For communities,
financial education programs can help promote stronger and more
stable neighborhoods—where residents are more resistant to
downturns in the economy and other financial threats.
Financial education can help families
become more aware of common pitfalls and thus avoid them.
It can also help them to learn the financial management and
planning skills needed to make the most of their family income,
savings and assets. Financial education is vital for low
and moderate-income families, who often experience precarious
financial footing and have little or no savings to cushion any
kind of family emergency such as illness or a temporary loss of
a job. Trends that have emerged in recent years that
underscore the importance of financial education include
stagnant wages; increased living costs in housing, health care,
and transportation; a dramatic decline in individual and
household savings; record-high consumer debt and credit card
delinquency; and a sharp increase in bankruptcy rates and
mortgage defaults and foreclosures.
The staff at the CHRC have designed and
developed the financial education program
CreditSmart® Workshops which augment the Center's homebuyer
services for families who want to become homeowners. As a
non-profit dedicated to opening doors to homeownership for
families in the Portland/Vancouver area, we believe that the
single most effective way to prepare people for homeownership is
to educate them about the importance of using credit wisely.
Establishing and maintaining good credit is essential for
building a sound financial future.
CreditSmart® is a national curriculum which is licensed to
the Center by Freddie Mac for classes. The Center has
assistance from local bank personnel to help teach the classes.
Staff at CHRC recruits and trains volunteers; provides
one-on-one credit, budget, and debt management counseling to
CreditSmart® class participants; and tracks data to measure
client outcomes.
The goals of the CreditSmart® financial
education program is to transform lives; produce consumers who
understand the importance of using credit wisely, create
savings, and establish financial goals and skills to achieve
homeownership and/or build a sound financial future; and
empower individuals to handle money responsibly, all of which
will have a positive life-long impact on them, their families,
and the community.
The financial education class addresses
the following subjects:
- Setting financial goals
- Distinguishing between wants
and needs
- Creating a spending plan or budget
- Building or rebuilding credit
- Managing debt
- Creating savings and shopping for
financial and banking services
- Important information about
consumerism, credit card, and predatory lending
- Credit repair issues are addressed
After successfully completing a
CreditSmart® class,
participants are encouraged to access the Center's one-on-one
counseling services to pull and review their individual credit reports, assist
with budgets, help repair credit issues and provide tools to
manage debt. Savings goals are reviewed, spending leaks
identified, and successful money savings techniques are
introduced. The counseling service is available to the
public for $50.00. Call Kevin Gillette at (360) 690-4496,
ext. 101 to make an appointment.
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