homewise® FY2021 ANNUAL REPORT

Over this past year, Homewise has remained flexible and adaptable as we continue to focus on achieving our mission in an impactful and organizationally sustainable way in this ever-changing environment. What began as a quick pivot to delivering our programs and services remotely, evolved into the need to respond to changing economic and market conditions with innovative new programs, services and assistance for our clients.

For many families in New Mexico, the economic hardships caused by COVID-19 affected their ability to pay their mortgage on time and keep their home asset that they worked so hard to achieve. Losing your home to foreclosure is a traumatic process that can, in worst-case scenario, increase the number of homeless people in our community, create negative impact on neighborhoods, and put a further strain on limited social services. We believe that the best approach to this crisis is a proactive approach, so we launched the Emergency Mortgage Assistance Fund. This year, Homewise raised over $700,000 and helped 290 families across New Mexico continue to make their mortgage payments and stay in their homes during this time of financial hardship.

With mortgage rates at historic lows, and many families looking for ways to save money, we saw an opportunity to help many of our clients refinance their current mortgage to reduce their monthly payment. We quickly dedicated more staff and increased our outreach efforts to meet the demand and provide our clients with the highest level of service, even in a remote-working environment. This year, Homewise helped over 450 clients refinance their mortgage, a 275% increase over the prior year.

We also heard from several clients that they were looking for ways to reduce the overall cost of maintaining their homes and wanted to know more about options like energy-efficient home improvements, low water usage landscaping, and do-it-yourself projects. In response, we launched our newest education offering, an online course called New Home, Now What?, which covers topics ranging from basic home maintenance and repair, to low cost home security options, to creating a home savings plan, and more. Over 100 people have already attended the class and are now more empowered to be long-term successful homeowners.

This year, with the support of the New Mexico Small Business Investment Corporation, we also launched our first ever commercial loan initiative to help small business owners, particularly those operating in disinvested neighborhoods, to purchase their own building for their business. Homewise launched this program to help existing businesses own their own facilities, thereby helping them build wealth and increase stability. The program also aims to help decrease vacancy in disinvested communities by enabling the purchase of vacant commercial buildings. Later in the report is a video featuring our very first commercial loan client, Por Vida Tattoo, which we hope you will enjoy.

Another major milestone achieved this year was the launch of the Community Catalyst Fund with our partners at Anchorum St. Vincent and Enterprise Bank & Trust. The Fund is a capital source to finance high impact and much-needed community development initiatives across New Mexico like creating affordable housing and mixed-use developments, helping homeowners make energy-efficient home improvements, creating low-impact rental housing through casitas and guest houses, and helping seniors make necessary home modifications to age in place. Since we originally launched the Fund, the Santa Fe Community Foundation, Illinois No 3 Foundation, New Mexico Bank & Trust, and two individual investors have also made investments, bringing total investments in the Fund to over $16.5 million.

And last but certainly not least, we’re excited to share a change in the structure of our executive leadership team. Mike Loftin has served as the CEO of Homewise for 29 years, and continues to drive the long-term vision, strategy, and financial wellbeing of the organization. We’ve also now added the role of President to our executive team, which will be filled by Laura Altomare. Laura has been with Homewise since 2014 and previously served as our Chief Communications Officer. She also recently served as our Acting CEO while Mike was on sabbatical. In this new role, Laura will lead the Senior Leadership team to set and implement organizational strategy and direction while ensuring the organization is achieving its mission in a highly impactful and organizationally sustainable way. With Laura in this role, Mike now has the opportunity to shift his focus more heavily toward advancement of our HomeWisdom thought leadership initiative to increase national awareness among policy makers, community organizations, and philanthropy that affordable homeownership strategies are effective in improving the financial security of low-income households and in strengthening neighborhoods.

It’s been a year of adaptability and flexibility for all of us and we invite you to read more about our work, and meet some of the people who have experienced its transformative impact, in the pages of this year’s annual report. We remain deeply committed to serving individuals, families and communities across New Mexico and continuing to deliver on the promise of our mission. Thank you for supporting Homewise.