25% of Jersey Homeowners Can't Afford Repairs

From the Star Ledger:

Dire state of repairs

The wooden front steps on Jane Blake's house in Newark were built this spring by volunteers who installed them above the debris from concrete steps built a dozen years ago by a long-forgotten contractor.

"It wasn't even three years before those concrete steps started to crumble," said Blake, 72, a retired assembler for the Ohaus scale company in Florham Park. "It looked like maybe there was too much sand in the mix. They just fell apart. They were dangerous to walk on, and I used to worry about the postwoman climbing up them every day."

Yet Blake and Sarah Marson, a former Ohaus co-worker who owns the house with her, are still on the hook for the remaining $6,000 of a $12,800 loan that financed both the concrete steps and some replacement windows -- which she said don't keep out the winter drafts. "I can't remember the name of that contractor, but if I could I'd never recommend him to anyone."
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According to a study, 12 percent of New Jersey's homeowners, or about a quarter million, can't afford to make repairs on their homes, and that some are losing their homes to foreclosure when they default on loans taken out to make the repairs.

"A lot of people can't take care of their homes, and then you see them pushing a shopping cart down the street," Blake said.

Today, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice plans to release a 25-page report, "House Rich, Pocket Poor and Under Threat: Home Repair financing and Homeownership Preservation in New Jersey." Ken Zimmerman, institute executive director, who co-authored the study with colleague Yahonnes Cleary, said solving the home repair gap will require money from government grants and private loans, and he doesn't have an estimate of the dollars needed.