Do First, Learn Later

I haven't written anything in a while, and I especially have been avoiding talking more about my position at the HDA.  Mostly that's because there is so much to say that I didn't know where to start.  So there are things that I'll talk a little about today, and more about in later posts.

As the title suggests, most of the things I do at the Housing Development Alliance started by me doing them first, and then learning more about during/after.  As I wrote when I first started, my very second day here I started taking all of the client intakes: both in person and over the phone.  I didn't even really know everything we do at the time, so I was winging it for sure.  But as I've talked to more and more clients and found out their situations and what programs they fit into, I now (and for a while now) know what to say to clients and how to direct them towards their next steps in the application process.  As time has gone by, my responsibilities have grown.  A few weeks ago, I was working to help re-do our Housing Counseling Manual.  We do housing counseling throughout the homebuying process, and this is one of the requirements of USDA Rural Development for them to provide a loan to a client.  Much of it was outdated and we decided to look at it and see what we could change for the better.  The parts that I worked on were ones I was not an expert in, so I had to do a fair amount of research to make sure what I wrote was correct.  This included sections on living "green," saving money on your food and phone bill, and avoiding predatory lenders (watch for a later post on predatory lending).  Learning more about all of these things has also been helpful in my own personal life- and trying to manage/stretch the limited living allowance I get from AmeriCorps.

My other more recent responsibilities include doing Credit Reviews and serving as a Loan Originator.  Checking people's credit actually did require quite a bit of learning ahead of time.  But I am continuing to learn as I see different credit reports.  For the most part, the credit reports we see are either Not Scored or have low scores.  So I am learning how to counsel clients on how to build credit, improve credit, and dispute any false information on their credit report.  I very recently started filling out loan applications with clients who need repairs, which involves A TON of paperwork.  And everything has to be arranged just right when the finalized applications get sent up to Rural Development.  This has made me think about the differences between ASP and what I'm doing now (also to be discussed in a later post)- one of which being the amount of paperwork.  If I could go back to this past summer, I would complain much less about having to find deeds and titles compared to the massive amount of documentation required here for each client to apply for a government loan.

Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm complaining, I actually do like this style of learning.  It keeps things exciting and I get to see how the things I'm learning apply in all different situations.

*Also, a note on the last post/ Coal Severance:  I have learned a little more about it, and I guess the Coal Severance Tax is county-based.  So counties with a lot of coal industry physically located in their county get a lot of Coal Severance money, and vice-versa with counties who do not.  This can be unfortunate for smaller counties that don't have a lot of coal mines located in their county, yet many of their residents are coal miners.  Organizations who want some of their county's money (non-profits, etc.) petition their county judge, who ultimately makes the decision about where the money goes.