TIPS FROM TRIP
Program offers maintenance training for new homeowners
TROY, N.Y. >> For more than 10 years the Troy Rehabilitation and Improvement Program along with Rensselaer County Housing Resources have offered home maintenance training courses for new or upcoming homeowners.
“The training courses are free,” said Martin Morey, Rehabilitation Specialist with TRIP. “We do home buying grants for first time home buyers and when they purchase through the grant program they have to take post purchase education.”
The training courses began Tuesday night and will run every Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at 409 River St. At TRIP’s Home-Ownership Center customers can access a wide array of services including homebuyer education, financial counseling, grant assistance, matched savings programs, and more.
“The purpose of the class is to teach them enough knowledge, so that if they need to hire somebody to come fix something in their house they will know how to do that,” said Morey. “We are here to empower the people and anytime you gain extra knowledge you’re better informed and then you’re a better consumer.”
The first of the 8-week course was an introduction overview and Morey also showed the group of homebuyers how to use different tools in case the homebuyer wanted to perform any work on their own. About 10 people were in attendance for the first meeting and the group consisted of recent homebuyers and also people looking to buy a home in the near future.
“I hope you guys get something out of this,” Morey told the group during his first lesson Tuesday night. “Everybody has a dream to buy a nice house and many people usually will want to do upgrades to their new home and hopefully these classes will help you with that.”
Morey gave the group more advice to help make any home maintenance work go smoother.
“Your time is very limited, that’s why I always say buy extra materials because you don’t want to have to keep making trips to Home Depot for more materials,” explained Morey. “Always read the directions, they make directions for a reason and they add a lot of clarity to ev-
erything.”
People who attended Tuesday night’s class said that they are hoping to be able to learn a lot of important skills related to their homes.
“I think these classes are awesome and it is great that they are offered for free,” said Sharon Hempstead, who is looking to purchase a home soon through the grant program. “I hope to learn some basic home maintenance skills from this.”
“I wanted to attend this class voluntarily so that I could learn some skills to be able to do stuff around the house myself instead of hiring someone to do the work,” added Kara Stover, who bought a house in Troy in 2015.
The next class on March 3 will be an overview of home electrical systems and other topics for the course will include plumbing, sheetrock and taping, paint education, weatherization overview and many more.
For more information or to register for the courses visit TRIP’s website at, http:// www.triponline.org/homeownership/workshops/