Campus Partners is pitching in $500,000 toward a plan to increase home ownership in the university district, said Joe Williams, director of real estate of the group. An initiative through OSU, Campus Partners, the city of Columbus, and Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest purchaser of home mortgage loans, will attempt to lure OSU employees to buy homes in the district, he said.”Of all the Campus Partners recommendations, most people felt home ownership had to happen,” he said. “Anytime you have an increase in home ownership, the people have more of a stake in the neighborhood. They become much more involved in the neighborhood and the community.”James Johnson, chair and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, announced the partnership on May 6 as part of a $1.5 billion investment plan to provide affordable financing for more than 22,000 low to moderate and middle-income families in central Ohio.Williams said the city of Columbus has also proposed to allocate $400,000 to assist with down payments and that Fannie Mae’s new Columbus office will bring unique programs fit for this market. “We can also feed off of successful programs that have already been established,” he said.Robert Brown, chair of the Department of Mathematics, said the initiative would most likely have an effect on newer faculty.”To older, tenured faculty the incentives would not be so important,” he said. “They’re more settled in their neighborhoods and with their friends‹they’re more unlikely to pick up and move.”Williams said OSU sees it as a negotiating tool to recruit employees for the university. “We can offer this program as a benefit to prospective employees,” he said.The campus area home ownership rate is currently about 10 percent, while an area like Clintonville is about 90 percent, he said.”I’m very happy living in Clintonville. I have a lot of pride in the neighborhood. Maybe campus will be like that someday too,” said Brenda Mellett, a secretary in the Department of Physics.