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.p Star Tribune April 19, 2003 By Neal Gendler Bremer Bank first to offer program helping workers buy homes ecord-low interest rates during the past year have helped offset record-high home prices, enabling any people with modest incomes to buy their first homes. And higher apartment vacancies and a slowdown of rent increases have opened the doors to decent apartments for others. But for a sizable number of people, hopes of buying a home or moving to a convenient, desirable apartment are stymied by not having enough cash. One Twin Cities-area employer, Bremer Financial Corp., has inaugurated an unusual public-private program to help solve such problems for its workers. St. Paul-based Bremer said the program is intended to show employers the self-interest benefits of giving their workers cash for housing needs. "A lot of folks can handle a monthly payment, but they have difficulty [meeting] the origination fee and cash qualifications," said Stan Dazdis, Brewer's CEO. Some renters have trouble coming up with the cash . for the first-and last-month rent payments and security deposit that often aze required before they sign a lease. The new program, called IZEAL/I~LP, is a joint project of Bremer Financial -- owner of Bremer Bank -- the Greater Twin Cities United Way and the Greater Metropolitan Housing Corp. (GMHC), with help from Fannie Mae, the nation's largest source of home-mortgage funds. United Way will offer the program to other businesses wanting to serve community interest while making their companies more attractive places to come to work and to remain. Business-sponsored GMHC will take the applications and administer the program for Bremer and other businesses that choose to use it. Fannie Mae gave technical help designing the program and opening access to the secondary market, where mortgages aze resold as securities, with the proceeds used to fund more mortgages. The acronym REAL/IIELP stands for the Rental Employee Assistance Loan Program and Homebuyer Employee Loan Program. Brewer's program -- hoped to be the template for others -- offers qualifying employees five-year loans of up to $5,000 to buy a first home and up to $2,000 to make first and last rent payments plus security deposits. The loans are forgiven if the employee remains with Bremer for five years. Dardis said Bremer, which has worked to boost affordable housing through work with United Way and other agencies, didn't start the program for "the traditional profit motive," even though it expects to benefit. "First, it's the right thing to do," he said. "It's not what you say -- it's all about what you do. This is an opportunity to show "The Bremer Difference.' It's an opportunity to differentiate ourselves as an employer." It's also a way to retain good workers, he said, which is why the repayment obligation doesn't vanish until the end of five years; an employee leaving or laid off early must repay the remaining loan balance remaining according to a normal amortization schedule.