SAN ANTONIO -- The city wants its employees to live in San Antonio's inner city area so badly that they're offering to help them buy their very first home.
Through the new home ownership program for employees or "HOPE," full-time city employees will be given between $5,000 and $10,000 loans to help with down payments and closing costs of their first home.
Lori Houston with the Inner City Development office says the reason behind the plan is two-fold.
"First, we want to make sure we're providing our employees a way to purchase a home. We also want to repopulate the inner city area," Houston said. "That area did lose population in the last census and also we want to repopulate downtown with new homeowners."
Employees must be with the city for five years to have the loan paid off.
Full-time city employees can apply to qualify for the HOPE program starting in july.
For more information call the inner city development office at 210-207-3914.
