Family Self Sufficiency helps families save and buy their first home. Here’s how it works.

Homeownership is a dream for many Americans, and Jenny Marcelin was no exception.

Marcelin wanted a place to call her own. A home where her 11- and 14-year-old could have friends over or make noise and not worry about the neighbors. Still the cold reality would plague her: “Where am I gonna get that much money?”

Marcelin lived in affordable housing in Boston. She worked a full-time job and saved. But as she tells it, “The down deposit was always an issue. . . . I would think, ‘I’ll never make it.’ ”

In the fall of 2020, she got a flier in the mail advertising something she thought was too good to be true — an obscure federal program that would allow her to leverage her rent to save toward a nest egg.