The university, Fannie Mae Corp. and the Gloria J. Parks Community Center (GJPCC) have joined forces to develop a homebuyer-education project that includes incentives to encourage UB employees to buy homes in the neighborhoods surrounding the university's South Campus.

The project is part of the University Community Initiative (UCI), a major public-service initiative of UB.

The program will offer a series of seminars to UB employees who want to assess their homebuyer readiness, who have limited or no major financial barriers and who want to qualify for home-buyer assistance programs available through various financial institutions.

The seminars, led by GJPCC staff, will be offered on Saturdays in the community center, located at 3082 Main St., Buffalo. The registration fee is $25 per person, with the remaining costs to be underwritten by the Office of Public Service and Urban Affairs.

UB employees interested in obtaining further information about the program should call the community center at 832-1010.

"This new project will allow us to build on our partnership with community agencies and draw upon their considerable experience as a provider of homebuyer education," says Danis J. Gehl, UCI project director. "It's our way of encouraging UB employees to look at the neighborhood around the South Campus" when buying a home.

In addition to receiving a certificate that can be used to satisfy the homebuyer-education requirement to receive assistance from various local lenders, each employee completing the session will receive:

• A certificate allowing $100 to be waived from the mortgage origination fee by M&T Bank for qualified buyers purchasing a house within the UCI project area

• A coupon that, when presented with an executed purchase agreement, can be redeemed for a discount on a pre-purchase home inspection for any house within the UCI project area

• $50 toward a family membership for Gloria J. Parks Community Center

• A "Neighborhood Discovery" package of coupons for various goods and services from local establishments

"We want to thank the Fannie Mae Buffalo Partnership Office for its assistance in developing this project," added Mary H. Gresham, vice president for public service and urban affairs.

Although this program is geared specifically to UB employees, there are similar programs available to members of the general public through the Gloria J. Parks Community Center and Kensington-Bailey Neighborhood Housing Services, Gehl points out.

UCI unites public- and private-sector stakeholders in the City of Buffalo and the towns of Amherst, Cheektowaga and Tonawanda, as well as UB, in efforts to stabilize and revitalize the neighborhoods surrounding the university's South Campus.

For more information about UCI, visit the initiative's Web site at http://wings.buffalo.edu/uci.