CONWAY — Morgan Drayton of Conway wanted to stop renting and buy a home where her young son could have his own room, a backyard and maybe a dog.
She achieved her dream three years ago by participating in a savings program through the Community Action Program for Central Arkansas.
Drayton, now a 26-year-old single mother of two, was accepted for the Individual Development Account program in 2014 and used the money she saved, plus $2,000 that CAPCA kicked in, to pay closing costs to buy her first home in April 2016.
Drayton said the home purchase changed her life for the better.
“I always wanted to be a homeowner,” Drayton said. “It got me out of living in an apartment.”
Melissa Allen, community-programs director for CAPCA, said Drayton is a perfect example of how the program can work.
She said the program is designed to enable low-income families to save toward a targeted amount, usually used for building assets in the form of homeownership, home repairs, postsecondary education or small-business ownership.
The most common use for the money is for college, she said.
“We don’t want people to take out student loans,” Allen said
Participants have to put a minimum of $27.70 a month in the account for at least six months and can continue for up to two years.
“It gets them in the habit of saving,” Allen said.
When the account has $667 in it, CAPCA pays $2,000 to “whoever it is — [the University of Central Arkansas] for tuition, closing costs for a home,” Allen said.
Closing costs alone are very expensive, Allen said, adding that the $2,000 CAPCA puts in is “a huge benefit.”
Drayton bought an almost 1,200-square-foot home with three bedrooms, two baths and a two-car garage.
”I took the check straight to the title company,” Drayton said of the money saved and matched through the program.
Allen said if there are two adults in a home, and each participates in the saving program, they can receive $4,000 when they reach their savings goals.
Drayton saved more than was required, too.
Drayton, a 2014 graduate of UCA, is an alumni-relations specialist at the university. She also started in February as a real estate agent for Sandstone Real Estate Group.
At the time she entered the Individual Development Program, she was working as a bank teller, “not making a whole lot,” she said.
CAPCA assigned a caseworker to Drayton and walked her through the application process for the Independent Development Account.
Participants must be at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines and have a dependent under age 18 living in the home with them. Drayton had her son, Andrew, who is now 7. She now also has a 2-year-old daughter, Robin.
Participants receive the book Money Makeover and a workbook by Dave Ramsey, a nationally syndicated radio host who writes about financial planning.
“You have to do financial literacy training throughout the whole process,” Allen said.
“I love Dave Ramsey,” Drayton said.
Drayton credits her mother with doing the research to find a program that could help the single mother pay closing costs on a home.
She said when she applied for the savings program, her parents, Judith and Larry Drayton of Conway, had been reading Ramsey, but Drayton said she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it.
The financial-planning part of the Independent Development Account program made it possible for her to get her home and improved other areas of her life, Drayton said.
“I learned a lot; my parents had started the Dave Ramsey process. When I set a goal of purchasing a home, I had other debts to pay off before I purchased a home. I had credit-card debt and a car payment. I paid off the credit card and kept the note on my car, which I eventually paid off.”
She said the CAPCA program challenged her to take a better look at her spending habits. She stopped eating out so much, for example.
People may access their money for certain reasons, Allen said.
“There are restrictions on how many emergencies they can have. It is their money, but if they pull it out without an approved emergency, they’ll be dropped from the program,” she said. “They can also ask it to pause. They can take an emergency break and come back whenever they can. They just have to communicate with their caseworker.”
She also said the $667 or more in savings for the CAPCA match “must be earned money,” not a tax refund, for example.
Allen said Drayton approached CAPCA to help promote the Independent Development Account program, not so people will buy a home from her, “but for her to give them hope.”
“I advocate for my community, or for anyone else who needs it,” Drayton said.
Allen said the Individual Development Account program will continue “as long as we have funds available, and we do have funds available.”
For more information about the Individual Development Account, contact Myracle White or Tiffany Leach at (501) 329-3891.
Allen said although Drayton’s case manager is no longer a CAPCA employee, another case manager looked at Drayton’s file.
“She was very impressed,” Allen said. The caseworker wrote that Drayton “is absolutely amazing; she sets goals and meets them.’”
And Drayton got her son that dog — a Sheltie named Penny.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.