"Let's buy a house," he said.

"Are you nuts?," I asked him. "You know we can't afford a house!"

It was 1988, and we were longtime friends in our mid-30s who had just finished graduate school. Now we were playing catch-up with the American dream.

The next morning, I was up and dressed at dawn. "C'mon, c'mon," I urged him. "We're gonna' buy a house!"

Home ownership may be the epitome of the American dream but, in Asbury Park, it's an elusive dream at best. According to the 2000 federal census, only 19 percent of our 6,754 occupied housing units are owner-occupied. The other 81 percent are rentals - a statistic that is the reverse of many towns.

The reasons are many and complex, but they can probably be summed up best in our city's median household income of $23,081, the lowest in Monmouth County.

Still, it's a situation that Hazel Samuels is determined to change - resident by resident, and family by family.

As the head of the city's Department of Housing and Community Development, Samuels manages over half a million dollars in Community Development Block Grants annually from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

And she administers a range of programs aimed at getting families and individuals into their own Asbury Park homes - and keeping them there.

"I've been in Asbury Park since I was a little girl," she said. "I went to school here, and I raised my children here. This job is my passion, and I'm blessed to be paid for it."

In 2000, Samuels established the Home Ownership Institute to prepare first-time buyers for the realities of home ownership.

During the course of six weekly sessions, participants learn how to shop for a mortgage, how to estimate the amount of house they can afford, how to budget before and after buying a home, and how to repair the damage already done to their finances by "those little pieces of plastic" - credit cards.

Class members then meet individually with HUD-certified counselors from N.J. Citizen Action to review their credit ratings and to set up a budget plan to repair any lurking credit problems - a process that can take from a few hours to two years, depending on their individual spending and saving histories.

The free program is open to anyone interested in buying an Asbury Park home, with preference given to current residents, and the next class should begin this summer.

Once it's time to actually sign the mortgage, Samuels' department can also grant up to $5,000 in closing costs through its Home Buyers' Assistance program. Income criteria do apply here (a family of two should make no more than about $43,500, for example, and a family of four should make no more than about $54,400), but this no-interest loan doesn't have to be repaid if the homeowner lives in the house for at least five years.

"It's a carrot, not a stick," Samuels explains. "We want you to come here and remain here."

Of course, as any homeowner can ruefully tell you, it's often the problems that arise after the mortgage is signed that can make or break a budget: the tiny leak that turns into a full-blown monsoon, the plumbing bill that rivals the national debt.

A 12-session Home Maintenance Education class, taught by instructors from the Monmouth County Vocational School, teaches Asbury Park homeowners to identify minor problems while they are still minor, and to do simple plumbing, plastering and other repairs.

And Samuels also administers a Home Emergency Loan Program (HELP) of up to $5,000 for people who face roof leaks, furnace problems, or other major emergencies that they can't afford to fix.

"About 40 percent of Asbury Park homeowners - generally seniors - are cost-burdened, which means that they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing," Samuels said. "That explains why they defer home repairs, let alone home improvements."

The HELP program often lets residents stay in their homes - particularly since other options, like assisted living, may be beyond their financial reach.

Samuels and her housing support staff - Denise Brown, Rosetta Johnson, Lorraine Blake and Myra Colon - offer several other programs, ranging from neighborhood beautification projects with the Asbury Park Garden Club, to lead safety classes, to relocation assistance for people living in unfit apartments.

There is even a special program that allows Asbury Park police officers, teachers, and school administrators to purchase HUD-owned city homes at 50 percent of the list price.

And - most significantly for the future - Samuels is the visionary who proposed and championed the West Side STARS housing redevelopment program that I described in an earlier column. (Stage 1 of that project has now advanced to the Planning Board, a prerequisite to finalizing negotiations with the designated developer.)

Call Samuels at 732-502-5730 for more information on any of these programs or to be placed on the on-going waiting list for one of the classes.

Last Tuesday, I attended a reception for new Asbury Park home-buyers, hosted by Samuels' department. Each had their own special story to tell.

There was the family of six, who moved into a new, three bedroom house from a 1-1/2 bedroom basement apartment. The young couple buying their first home in the building where they had rented for years. The two single women who love Asbury Park, both buying their first homes. The family whose two young children were rapidly making friends in their new neighborhood.

And each described how Samuels and her staff had helped them achieve their dream.

You can't ask for better payback.

As for Dave and me, we drove across the bridge into Asbury Park that day in 1988 and fell in love with the first house we visited: a 1920's beauty, with polished wooden floors, glass doorknobs, original molding, and wall-to-wall windows.

And eight months later, surrounded by family and friends, we were married in our new living room on Locust Drive, with Shambles the dog as our ring-bearer.

I have to agree with Hazel Samuels: There's no place like home.