The application window for Arizona’s HOME Plus down payment assistance program resets its funding allocation every fiscal year — and as of early 2026, housing counselors across the state are urging eligible residents to apply before summer, when demand typically surges. For someone like Tommy Bianchi, 46, a licensed HVAC technician from Phoenix, that deadline carries more weight than he expected.
When I met Tommy at a diner off I-17 on a Tuesday morning in late March, he had a folder of printed bank statements beside his coffee cup. He wasn’t sure he needed them. He just wanted to look like he had his act together, he told me. After three years of renting, he still wasn’t sure he did.
The Cost of a Divorce Nobody Plans For
Tommy’s marriage ended in 2022 after eleven years. The details are ones he shares in clipped, careful sentences — not because he’s hiding anything, but because he’s clearly rehearsed staying neutral about it. What he doesn’t soften are the numbers.
The divorce settlement awarded the family home to his ex-wife. Legal fees, which he hadn’t anticipated reaching the level they did, totaled $22,000. He put the bulk of that on two credit cards. He now pays $1,600 a month in child support for his two children, ages nine and thirteen.
Child support represents roughly 25 percent of his gross monthly income — which means he clears just over $6,400 before taxes. After the support payment, income taxes, rent, minimum credit card payments, and utilities, there is, by his own accounting, very little left.
He knows, intellectually, that he overspends during visits. He sees the kids every other weekend. He wants those two days to feel different from whatever they experience the rest of the time. It’s a pattern housing counselors and financial social workers recognize in non-custodial parents — the compressed intensity of limited time translating directly into spending.
Three Years of Renting and a Question He Kept Avoiding
Tommy has rented the same two-bedroom house in the West Valley since October 2022. His rent is $1,450 a month — a figure he pointed out has gone up twice since he moved in, starting at $1,250. He has never seriously looked into whether he could qualify for a home purchase, partly because the credit card debt felt disqualifying, and partly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to revisit the whole process.
“I knew what a mortgage application was going to find,” he told me, stirring his coffee. “I didn’t want to sit across from a loan officer and explain my whole life to somebody.”
The turning point came from a coworker who mentioned the Arizona Department of Housing‘s HOME Plus program at a job site in January. Tommy didn’t look it up for six weeks. When he finally did, he called a HUD-approved housing counselor through a nonprofit referral — something he described as feeling, unexpectedly, like a practical conversation rather than a judgment.
What the Housing Counselor Actually Told Him
Tommy’s counseling session, which he described in some detail, lasted about ninety minutes. The counselor — a woman he referred to only as “Maria” — walked through his full financial picture without the reaction he’d braced for. What emerged was not a green light, but it wasn’t a door closing either.
His credit score, pulled during the session, came back at 621. According to HUD’s FHA guidelines, a 580 or higher credit score qualifies a borrower for a 3.5 percent down payment FHA loan. Tommy’s score clears that threshold, though just barely. The challenge is the debt-to-income ratio — a figure that includes child support as a fixed monthly obligation alongside the credit card minimums.
Tommy’s current DTI, with rent excluded but with all fixed debts included, sits at approximately 41 percent. That number changes when a projected mortgage payment replaces his rent. Depending on the purchase price, it could push him past the threshold — or keep him just inside it.
“She told me I wasn’t in as bad a shape as I thought I was,” Tommy said. “But she also said I had work to do. She didn’t sugarcoat it.”
The Part He Still Hasn’t Solved
Tommy hasn’t applied yet. When I asked him why, he was quiet for a moment in a way that didn’t feel like evasion — more like he was being honest with himself in real time.
The credit card balances are still largely intact. He made a larger payment in February — about $800 toward the smaller card — and felt genuinely good about it. Then his older daughter’s birthday was the following weekend. He spent $340 on a dinner out and a gift she’d mentioned wanting. He doesn’t express regret about the birthday. He expresses something closer to frustration with himself for not finding a way to do both.
The tension in Tommy’s situation isn’t unusual. Housing counselors who work with post-divorce clients describe a pattern where the legal and emotional aftermath of divorce creates compounding financial obstacles that standard assistance programs weren’t designed to address holistically. The programs exist. The eligibility often exists. The gap is in execution — the discipline required when the emotional stakes are high and the support structure has been fractured.
Where He Stands Now — and What He’s Decided
By the end of our conversation, Tommy had set his folder of bank statements aside. He told me he’s given himself a six-month target — by September 2026 — to have the smaller credit card balance under $3,000 and to schedule a second counseling session. He said “six months” with the particular tone of someone who has made and missed targets before and is trying to hold this one differently.
He’s not sure the timing will work out for this year’s HOME Plus funding cycle. He’s aware that if he misses the window, another one opens. That’s not giving up, he was clear about that. It’s just accounting for his own track record honestly.
What Tommy’s story surfaces isn’t a failure of government programs. The programs he qualifies for — or nearly qualifies for — do exist, and according to the Arizona Department of Housing, HOME Plus has helped thousands of Arizona residents purchase homes since its expansion. The harder obstacle is the personal one: the aftermath of a major life rupture that continues to drain resources, emotional and financial, in ways that compound slowly and don’t announce themselves as emergencies.
When I left the diner, Tommy was still sitting there, the folder in front of him again. He had his phone out and was looking at something on the screen. I didn’t ask what it was. It felt like a private moment — a man deciding, again, whether to start.
Related: He Thought a Master’s Degree Would Fix His Finances. It Cost Him $62K and Left His Family Drowning in Credit Card Debt.
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