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Community service At a recent news conference announcing the program, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly called employer- assisted housing "the wave of the future." He said the program is "part of a broad effort to address the very serious affordable-housing problem in the Twin Cities. We can lick this, but it will take some time." Bremer Financial is owned by the nonprofit Otto Bremer Foundation and employees. Dardis said REAL/HELP connects both with the foundation's work and with requirements that the regulated banking companies serve their communities. "We want a specific example of serving the community," he said, and encouraging homeownership is a way to build communities. United Way CEO Jim Colville said that REAL/HELP, which was a year in development, "is a program that we believe will be a real asset to our community." It fits in a three-part "housing connections" initiative that includes "helping employers to understand the issues of affordable housing ...how it affects their employees, their community around them." Other parts include helping to expand capacity of housing agencies and dealing with the discovery that one of the barriers to housing is the need for "service components" such as day care and transportation. "To make this thing really work, the people need sort of customized services. We're in the service business," Colville said. GMHC, which works to improve the availability and quality of affordable housing, will administer the program and take applications from employees of Bremer and other participating companies, said President Carolyn Olson. Four GMAC Housing Resource Centers offer consumers housing information, including first-time home-buyer classes and assistance with financing mortgages and improvements; foreclosure- prevention programs; construction management help, and administration of other agencies' programs. "We believe [REAL/HELP] is one of the best public-private housing initiatives," Olson said. Although it's new in the Twin Cities, it's not the first such program in the nation. Fannie Mae has helped more than 500 employers throughout the country create assistance programs, said Kerri McClimen, a communications manager in Chicago. In the Twin Cities azea, only a handful of employers are believed to have such extensive housing-assistance programs, said Missy Thompson, director of Fannie Mae's Minnesota Partnership Office in St. Paul. She said some banks provide assistance to their employees. "There's quite a bit of employer-assisted housing in Duluth, but it's been pretty unusual in the Twin Cities area," she said. Olson said many financial institutions waive the usual origination fee of 1 percent of the loan amount for employees who finance with them. How it works Barriers to ownership such as requirements for down-payment and closing-cost cash have been falling for several years, as Fannie Mae, its sibling Freddie Mac and many lenders have developed programs to reduce those burdens.But the idea of employers simply paying those costs is something new. Dazdis said the idea grew from his conversation with Steve Meades, president of Bremer Twin Cities Bank, about "United Way and our commitment there. What we wanted to do was to make real sure that with our new and expanded Twin Cities presence, we were very cognizant of the needs of the Twin Cities community. Affordable housing was very obvious," Dardis said. The discussion then turned to wanting to help Bremer employees avoid housing problems. Two trends were important: rising home prices and incomes that didn't keep up with the cost of buying • homes. In the Twin Cities, the median home price -- the point with half the sales for more, half for less -- is $189,000. According to Bremer, "On average, a modest three-bedroom home sells for $148,000; a family would have to earn $50,000 per year to qualify for purchase." S