Take it home

By Jane Norris

Published: July 31, 2008

Listeners who turn out for B.B. King’s concert Wednesday evening at the Charlottesville Pavilion won’t just be hearing the blues. They’ll be helping neighbors like Vickie Zavadsky see yellow.

King’s concert is a benefit for the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors’ Work Force Housing Fund, which helps nurses, firefighters, police officers and teachers like Zavadsky realize their dreams of owning homes in the communities in which they work.

Thanks to the program, Zavadsky, an English

teacher at Fluvanna County High School,

started the new year in a home of her own

near Fork Union. After years of staring at

white apartment walls that she wasn’t

allowed to paint, she savored the chance

to choose her own interior colors.

“I’m so happy to have yellow walls,’’

she said.

The Work Force Housing Fund gave Zavadsky the boost she needed to move from renting to home ownership by helping her come up with a down payment. She’d been paying rent comparable to her current mortgage payment, but the down payment had kept her dream just out of reach.

“I’d been looking for a house for quite a long time, but couldn’t quite afford it,’’ Zavadsky said. “It has been my big dream to buy a house.’’

“It’s critically important to do whatever we can to help out,’’ said Mary Elizabeth Allen, CAAR’s director of communications.

Allen said it’s the fourth annual concert to benefit the fund. Previous performers who’ve helped the fund are Bruce Hornsby, Train and the B-52’s. This time, the benefit concert is getting the royal treatment with the Grammy Award-winning music of King.

King, born Riley B. King in Itta Benna, Miss., is known for such hits as “The Thrill Is Gone,’’ “Woke Up This Morning,’’ “Three O’Clock Blues,’’ “Payin’ the Cost to Be the Boss’’ and “Why I Sing the Blues.’’

Known as the King of the Blues, the guitarist has stayed faithful to his form and kept pace with changing musical tastes at the same time, incorporating elements of rhythm and blues and jazz. A 1987 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, he’ll be performing on his trademark guitar, Lucille.

Eli Cook will be opening the show.

The Work Force Housing Fund helps hopeful homeowners by making it easier to apply for down-payment loans.

The rules are straightforward. To qualify, a person must be a police officer, firefighter, nurse or teacher who lives in Charlottesville or the counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa or Nelson. He or she needs to meet the standard Virginia Housing and Development Authority criteria for a loan and must be planning to buy a home in the community in which he or she works.

Charlottesville’s Piedmont Housing Alliance administers the fund, working with the buyers to make sure they’re ready to take on the financial responsibilities. PHA receives their applications for down-payment loans and gets the process under way. When it’s time to sell the house, the homeowner repays the loan amount to the fund, plus 6 percent of the original investment, to help the next person in line.

“For the last eight or nine years, I had been commuting about sixty minutes’’ from an apartment in Charlottesville, Zavadsky said. “I have a lot more free time now that I’m not in the car.’’

Having a shorter distance to work seems even sweeter since gas prices have risen, she said.

By getting home earlier, Zavadsky can enjoy summer’s simple pleasures — “to finally be able to sit on the front porch and to barbecue out,’’ she said. She’s found only one down side so far: That grass isn’t going to mow itself.

Zavadsky also has found the satisfaction of being not just a teacher, but a neighbor.

“I feel like now I can be part of the community and belong,’’ Zavadsky said.

That’s one of the goals of the fund, Allen said. In driveways in her own neighborhood, she sees police vehicles from several different jurisdictions

“For a majority of them, it’s [being] first responders,’’ Allen said. “When a major call comes, they have to come all the way in. The farther away they are, the harder it is.

“It tightens the community when they live in the communities they know. It’s nice to serve your neighbors.’’

Zavadsky said that she’d recommend the program to others who felt motivated to own their own homes and ready for the responsibilities of caring for a house.

“They made it so easy,’’ Zavadsky said of the process. “I’m going into equity now and not just spending on rent.’’