HOME, Inc.

Home Opportunities Made Easy (HOME, Inc.) is the oldest nonprofit housing organization in Des Moines. We have been serving Des Moines since 1967, when less than a dozen citizens were decided to take matters into their own hands when it came to affordable housing. It started with a simple idea of families helping families and has now grown into who we are today – a nonprofit HUD certified Housing Counseling Agency and Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO). We’re very proud of our history of rising to the occasion, and of being nimble and flexible enough to be able to change our programming to deal with the issues that people are facing right now. 

Our mission is to empower our neighbors by helping them overcome the barriers to obtaining and maintaining safe, stable, affordable housing. We do this through education, housing counseling, neighborhood revitalization, and affordable housing development.

We believe that everyone deserves a place to call home! 

We have a lot of services across the housing spectrum: Homelessness prevention, rental counseling, pre-purchase counseling, post-purchase counseling, housing educations classes, home repair/rehabilitation, and property development. Our biggest programs are Housing Counseling and Property Development. 

Housing Counseling - Housing counseling is a FREE, confidential, one-on-one service designed to support individuals throughout their housing journey. At HOME, Inc., we emphasize housing education and counseling to ensure our clients can make informed decisions and be stably housed. We will meet you where you’re at on your housing journey! We can help you with things like homelessness prevention, searching for housing, fair housing concerns, tenant/landlord issues, budgeting, financial literacy, credit scores, buying your first home, property insurance, and more! Counseling can be whatever you need it to be to reach your housing goals!

Property Development – We create homeownership opportunities for families living at or below 80% of Area Median Income. Historically, this has included single-family homes and duplexes, but we are actively working on townhome and row home projects! We are always pursuing new ways to offer homeownership opportunities in a variety of housing types.  Our clients come from all kinds of backgrounds, income levels, and family sizes. Our goal is to be able to offer attainable housing that meets the needs of a wide cross-section of households.

Our single-family homes are currently appraising for around $325,000 By utilizing construction subsidies and a variety of down payment assistance programs, we empower and enable families to achieve homeownership with mortgages ranging between $150,000 and $225,000. To further support our clients, we ensure their mortgage payments are at 30% or less of their gross income. This approach helps set families up for long-term success, ensuring financial and housing stability for years to come.