Homeownership is possible: professional homebuying advice is free

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Let’s say your car breaks down and ends up needing a transmission overhaul. Unless you’re a car mechanic who specializes in transmission work, odds are you wouldn’t try to fix things yourself. Such an undertaking would be completely overwhelming. Where would you start? What would you look for in diagnosing what needs to be repaired?

What specialized tools would you need, and where would you be able to access them?

The smart move here would be to seek professional help and look for quality work at the lowest fair price.

Buying your first home is a similarly complex and potentially overwhelming undertaking for most of us. How do you know you’ll be able to qualify homeownership advisors embedded in nonprofits and community-based organizations across our state. And the best news is, this help is free and available to anyone regardless of income or other factors.

When you enlist the services of an independent homeownership advisor, you’ll benefit from sitting down with someone who speaks your language, shares your background, has an office nearby and cares about helping you to evaluate homeownership for yourself.

First off, you’ll explore your financial readiness. The advisor will do a ‘soft pull’ of your credit report to see your credit score. Based on that, you’ll either move on to mortgage pre-qualification or spend some time working to improve your credit score. The advisor also will explore special loan and down payment assistance programs you may be eligible for. And as you move on to working with a Realtor, the ences of Henry Rucker, lead homeownership and financial coach at Minneapolis-based Project for Pride in Living (PPL). dream.” economic prosperity, but also hope. “Hope for the future; hope for a daughter’s education; hope for a family’s stability in homeownership; and hope for a lifetime of transformational wealth and health.” for a mortgage and afford the monthly payment? How will you successfully compete for the limited supply of available houses on the market? And how will you know if you qualify for any special programs or down payment assistance programs? Similar to our car repair example above, the smart move here is to seek professional help. Happily, such help is readily available from HUD-certified advisor will remain in your corner ready and able to answer any questions or deal with any complications that may come up along the way. (It’s also important to take a HUD-certified homebuyer education course, a topic covered in last week’s installment from the Minnesota Homeownership Center.)

The bottom line is, buying a home is likely one of the biggest financial transactions you’ll ever undertake. And it’s a transaction that can be navigated on your behalf, for free, by professional homeownership advisors.

Rucker is a strong believer in the transformative power of wealth creation and transfer to the next generation, which is one of the greatest benefits of owning your own home. He started his career in banking, but eventually transitioned to financial coaching and advising which he saw as an avenue to help more people than he would have been able to in his original field. “Day to day living can be super stressful if your finances are in disarray,” Rucker says. “But once you understand how finances work, how credit scores are determined and how budgeting is important, much of that stress can go away. Getting control of your finances allows you to achieve big goals, including homeownership. You can garden, your kids can play in the yard, and you can feel proud that you own something that can be passed along to them later in life.” gle dad, a family with five kids – they all went from an apartment to owning, while paying less and having more stability. Sometimes the process took several years, but they stayed the course and succeeded. They never gave up on their

Rucker’s enthusiasm for his work is common among his fellow homeownership advisors. Linda White, an advisor at Model Cities in St. Paul, says she provides not only information and access to social and

To enlist the help of a professional homeownership advisor near you, go to HOCMN.org/HomebuyerAdvising. Homeownership is possible. We can show you how.

For more information on the Minnesota Homeownership Center and its advisor and education services, visit www. HOCMN.org.

Let’s take a look at the homeownership advisor profession through eyes and experi-

Rucker recounts helping several of his coworkers who didn’t think homeownership was possible for them. “These people – a single mom, a sin-

Sean J. Ennevor, MD

Guest Contributor

Last week, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID pandemic is no longer an emergency. One would think then that we’d hear less about mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines. These state-of-the-art mRNA vaccine technologies and their speedy implementation were brought into the spotlight during the pandemic.

Johnson and Johnson created a vector vaccine via an adenovirus to deliver the SarsCov- 2 spike protein during the pandemic. Viral vector-based vaccines use a harmless virus to deliver instructions to the body for making antigens from the disease-causing virus into cells, triggering protective immunity against it. This differs from Pfizer and Moderna’s delivery of the spike protein via mRNA-based vaccines. Either delivery can be used to trigger the body’s immune response to combat the virus.

Interestingly, the same immune response to mRNA vaccines is applicable to other pathogens and diseases. We may use this approach to combat other viruses, bacteria, or

mRNA vaccines are not just for Covid

They may prove useful against other viruses, bacteria, even cancer

even cancer. This has been possible as this vaccine technology has actually been around for a long time and is well established. These types of vaccines are also being applied to other problematic conditions, including cancer, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus, also known as RSV.

Pfizer and Moderna developed the Covid vaccines utilizing their experience with mRNA vaccines. These vaccines were present over a decade prior to the pandemic. Just as mRNA vaccines instruct the body to mount a response to proteins within viruses, it also does the same with proteins within tumor cells when the immune system is instructed to do so via the mRNA programming, in essence creating a vaccine to be applied against cancers.

process of increasing the response to a stimulus—of T cells and starts an immune response to attack the tumor.

While no mRNA cancer vaccine is approved by FDA for treatment of cancer solely or even with long-established chemotherapy, they are approved for use with medications that enhance the body’s immune response to tumors. These medications are known as biologics, and the mRNA vaccines add to the enhanced response of one’s own immune system.

It is a challenging virus to battle as there are at least 20 strains of influenza all prone to seasonal mutation. Making a specific vaccine for each strain is quite challenging as the designers can only try and predict the predominant strain of flu when utilizing non-mRNA vaccine technologies.

tion present mildly as if they have a bad cold. Unfortunately, in young children or the elderly, both of whom may have compromised immune systems, RSV infection may lead to respiratory compromise or even pneumonia requiring hospitalization.

been deemed safe, proper vetting of these vaccines will require some time. Easily and rapidly made treatment solutions for viruses and bacteria that may make us sick are essential if we are to avoid future pandemics.

Dendritic cells found in the skin, intestines, nose, lungs and GI tract take up the mRNA and then produce proteins and antigens. The production causes the upregulation—the

A universal mRNA-based influenza vaccine may be on the horizon. This is significant as millions are infected by flu annually.

Of those, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized. Sadly, upwards of 50,000 people die from influenza every year.

The mRNA prototype vaccine will allow scientists to design a vaccine that induces the body to create a protein that is a similar protein in all the various flu mutations. In that way one vaccine could be effective against the variety of flu strains that exist.

Unlike a potential flu mRNA vaccine, Arexvy, a new mRNA vaccine for RSV, is here today. RSV is similar to measles or mumps in biological form, but many people with RSV infec-

Some readers may recall the older RSV inactivated virus vaccine offered to babies in the 1960s. Many children who received that vaccine sadly had worse infections after exposure to the RSV. The new vaccine reportedly will not cause this due to how it works, and it should greatly lower the risk of serious respiratory infection after exposure to RSV.

With all these scientific innovations comes regulation. Safety is paramount, and while mRNA-based vaccines have

Sean J. Ennevor, M.D. graduated with a B.A.S. in biology and economics from Stanford University, and as a Dean’s Scholar from UCLA School of Medicine where he received his MD. He completed his medical residency and fellowship in anesthesiology at Yale University, where he was chief resident and on staff. He practiced medicine in the Twin Cities for over 14 years, and presently serves as an advisor and investor for medical technology companies throughout the country.