Empowered by Home: Laura’s Family

Success Stories

Empowered by Home: Laura’s Family

Empowered by Home: Laura’s Family

Almost exactly a year after she attended an informational presentation about the County of Santa Clara’s Empower Homebuyers SCC program, Laura and her two kids moved into their new home. She did her research to compare the Empower Homebuyers SCC down payment assistance program with local below market rate programs. Ultimately, she decided the County’s…

Empower Home buyers

Success Stories

“Permanent Home Feeling” – an Empower Homebuyers SCC Update

Empower Home buyers

Housing Trust Silicon Valley’s virtual fall event, On the House, is on Tuesday, October 6. Get your tickets here! Empower Homebuyers – the Measure A funded down payment assistance program created by the County of Santa Clara and administered by us – has kept going through the pandemic and helped create 15 first time homebuyers…

Villas on the Park ribbon

Success Stories, Updates

PATH to Home: An Update on Villas on the Park

Villas on the Park ribbon

During the first week of March, several of our team walked a few blocks from our downtown San Jose office to Villas on the Park to celebrate the grand opening. At the time, COVID-19 restrictions were starting to appear (the shelter in place order would come a week later) but we were thrilled to attend…

Elizabeth Guardino Scholarship Winner 2020

Success Stories

Guardino Affordable Housing Scholarship Welcomes Class of 2020

Elizabeth Guardino Scholarship Winner 2020

We’d like for you to meet Elizabeth, one of the Guardino Affordable Housing Scholarship awardees of 2020. Elizabeth’s life was marked by movement but also staying in place around Turlock, a town in Stanislaus County. Before she turned 17 she had lived in seven different places – doubling up in houses of extended family members…

Justin and kids

Success Stories

Empowered by Home: Justin’s Story

Justin and kids

An assistant principal at Branham High School and a single dad, Justin Ponzio dreamed of having a home for his kids – ages five and six – to live and grow. When he found the Empower Homebuyers SCC program in 2019, the trio lived in a rental near a busy frontage road that was far…

Megan Ostiller.Empower

Success Stories

Empowered by Home: Megan’s Story

Megan Ostiller.Empower

Megan, a Bay Area native and a special education teacher at Union School District in San Jose, had been living in a tiny apartment in Campbell. In her third year of teaching, she knew she wanted to stay in her community and was ready for something bigger but like so many educators in the region,…

Karen Empower

Success Stories

Empowered by Home: Karen and Ngoc’s Story

Karen Empower

After emigrating from Vietnam, Karen and her husband Ngoc worked in the Bay Area for 14 years – she in banking and him as a technician – and were renting incrementally smaller living spaces even as their family grew to include two small children. When they found Empower Homebuyers SCC in 2019, they were on…

Michele and Don and Curtis

Success Stories

Home over Time: Michele & Don’s Story

Michele and Don and Curtis

Michele, an elementary schoolteacher, worked with our homeownership team in 2016 for our Below Market Purchase (BMP) program we administer for the city of Santa Clara. We caught up with her in 2018 – two years after she and her husband Don moved in, and they both expressed joy at living in a place where…