Jefferson And The Louisiana Purchase

Suburban home buyers are increasingly turning to rural development loans

At a time when prospective home buyers are having trouble scraping up a down payment to purchase a home, the Harrises were able to buy their dream house through a special U.S. Department of Agriculture loan program that allows home buyers to finance 100 percent of their purchase and get money back for renovations if the home appraises for more than the sales price.

"With the rural development loan, it helped us tremendously. We can do remodeling to the house with our own money," said Harris, who has already knocked down a wall, ripped out carpet and installed laminate flooring throughout the house. "If we went the regular way, we would have had to put at least $10,000 down."

As tough new lending rules knock many prospective home buyers out of the market, government-backed loan programs such as the USDA's rural development loan program have been a lifeline in suburban housing markets where sales have been slow. Realtors and loan officers say rural development loans are what's keeping suburban markets open, and some home builders have even begun designing homes at price points appropriate for the loans so they can keep their crews working.

Despite the program's name, all parts of the New Orleans metro area except Orleans Parish, most of Jefferson Parish and the Slidell area of St. Tammany Parish qualify for the program. Orleans is the only parish in the state that the program considers entirely off-limits.

Jarvis Gould was able to use the program to buy his first home on Jefferson Parish's West Bank in June. He loves that his new home in Waggaman is quiet and safe and has a big yard. Because the rural development loan he got through Eustis Mortgage didn't require a down payment, he said he had money left over to buy a lawn mower, some benches and a grill for his new house. "It gave me that extra cash to do some needed things, as well as some wanted things," he said.

Back in 1991, the federal government started guaranteeing 90 percent of each private loan made through the program to middle-class borrowers in rural areas. The aim of the program is to address the gap in private mortgage lending that long existed in rural communities. No down payments are required on the loans, and closing costs can be financed as part of the transaction. And if the home appraises for more than the sales price, the borrower can take out a loan for the appraised value of the house. There are no monthly mortgage insurance premiums, and no maximum loan amounts, but income is limited to $74,050 for a one- to four-person household, and $97,750 for a five- to eight-person household, though childcare expenses can be deducted, enabling some people with slightly higher incomes to qualify. And while minimum credit score requirements have risen in recent years in the rural development loan program, they're still more relaxed than in many other programs.

The Louisiana Purchase and American Imperialism: The Correlation ...

Americans have always viewed their republican experiment as a divinely inspired “mission” from the earliest days of the birth of the nation. Expanding the Puritan notion of the “New Israel” and the “City on a Hill,” American imperialism found justification in the belief that its citizens were “chosen” people. In 1805, Thomas Jefferson, in his Second Inaugural Address, referred to “that Being…who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life…” This was the justification Jefferson used to legitimize the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

Jefferson’s ideological decisions to support the purchase of New Orleans as well as the entire Louisiana Territory after it was offered to the United States by Napoleon Bonaparte of France was based, in part, on his understanding of Montesquieu’s correlation of natural law to geography. According to historian Albert Weinberg, Jefferson believed that America operated on an entirely different view of natural law. In terms of territorial expansion, this legitimized a westward movement that was referred to as “Manifest Destiny” in the 1840s and imperialism in the post-Civil War years.

Both Jefferson and members of Congress tied the right of navigation to territorial security, notably in the decision to purchase New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory. Geographic predestination was the natural extension of a “higher law,” later enunciated by Stephen Douglas over the Oregon territory during the Polk administration. Ultimately, the “missionary” element of American imperialism, so much a part of late 19th Century Anglo-Saxonism, would motivate American egalitarianism and altruism into the 21st century.

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