Tag Archives: state housing programs

Building HOME

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housing construction

The HOME Coalition, a coalition of affordable housing organizations, has posted Building HOME: The HOME Investment Partnerships Program’s Impact on America’s Families and Communities, its 2015 report. I don’t think HOME is a household word, at least when it is in ALLCAPS, so here are the basics, taken from the report:

For over 20 years, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) has proven to be one of the most effective, locally driven tools to help states and communities provide access to safe, decent, and affordable housing for low-income residents. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reports that since HOME’s authorization in 1990, $26.3 billion in HOME funds have leveraged an additional $117 billion in public and private resources to help build and preserve nearly 1.2 million affordable homes and to provide direct rental assistance to more than 270,000 families. The HOME Coalition estimates that this investment has supported nearly 1.5 million jobs and has generated $94.2 billion in local income.

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With HOME, Congress created a program that provides states and communities with unmatched flexibility and local control to meet the housing needs that they identify as most pressing. HOME is the only federal housing program exclusively focused on addressing such a wide range of housing activities. States and local communities use HOME to fund new production where affordable housing is scarce, rehabilitation where housing quality is a challenge, rental assistance when affordable homes are available, and provide homeownership opportunities when those are most needed. Moreover, this flexibility means that states and communities can quickly react to changes in their local housing markets. (7, emphasis removed)

The report calls attention to the fact that Congress has been making big cuts to HOME funding since 2010. These cuts show the complexities inherent in federal housing policy, coming as they do right on the heels of the creation of the National Housing Trust Fund in 2008.

Congress appears to giveth and taketh away from housing programs in equal measure. As an added bonus for Congress, it taketh away on-budget items (HOME) and giveth off-budget items (NHTF, funded by Fannie and Freddie surcharges), making it an even more politically expedient trade-off. HOME dollars are a lot more flexible than NHTF dollars, so even a dollar for dollar trade has significant downsides for state housing programs. There is a lot not to like about this development in federal housing policy.

Reiss in CSM on Rental Policy

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The Christian Science Monitor quoted me in Census Outlines ‘Poverty Areas’: Which States Hit Hardest? It reads in part,

The number of US residents living in “poverty areas” has jumped significantly since 2000, according to a Census Bureau report released Monday.

According the 2000 Census, less than 1 in 5 people lived in poverty areas. But more recently, 1 in 4 residents have lived in these areas, according to census data collected from 2008 to 2012.

The Census Bureau defines a poverty area as any census tract with a poverty rate of 20 percent of more.

Sociologists and other analysts point to the Great Recession, in particular housing and job challenges, as well as slow and uneven growth since the recession.

“With the advent of the financial crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble, many people lost their homes and thus needed to rent or move in with relatives,” says Cheryl Carleton, an economics professor at Villanova University near Philadelphia. “[I]ndividuals need to move where they can afford to live … which is going to be in areas where public housing is available or housing prices and rental rates are low, which is more likely to be in a ‘poverty area.’ ” Professor Carleton made her comments via e-mail.

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Law professor David Reiss suggests that changes to homeownership policies could help.
“Federal and state housing programs could do more to support a market for well-maintained rental units for low-income households,” e-mails Professor Reiss, who teaches at Brooklyn Law School. “Many low-income households have difficulty maintaining homeownership because of irregular incomes and low wealth.”