Home Ownership Plan

The best thing since sliced bread? You decide.

Palm Beach Post
By Barbara Marshall, Staff Writer
Saturday, March 24, 2007


It's official. Duane Fleming of Palm Beach Gardens has come up with one of the best ideas since sliced bread.

Fleming's suggestion beat more than 22,000 others to be one of 21 ideas included in the book Since Sliced Bread: Common Sense Ideas From America's Working Families (Chelsea Green Publishing, $12.95).

And like most good ideas, "It's very simple," said Fleming, a West Palm Beach city planner. "Why not give young people the equivalent of a housing 401(k)?"

His Home Ownership Plan (HOP) would be a tax-exempt workplace savings account for first-time home buyers. Instead of enrolling them in a retirement plan such as a 401(k), employers would establish an HOP for young workers. Employees would have part of their paychecks deposited into the account, and employers would match part of it.

If the employer contribution was 7.5 percent, which Fleming said is common for government jobs, "Employees with entry-level, $30,000-a-year jobs could save $48,000 in seven years."

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, liked the idea so much that in 1998 he introduced a bill called Restore the American Home, which outlined Fleming's ideas. The bill got all the way to a subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee before being killed. Fleming hopes the book generates renewed congressional interest.

The book and the Web site that sponsored the Since Sliced Bread contest are offshoots of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

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