Washington, DC - Achieving comprehensive housing finance reform requires moving the conversation forward, not back - but the administration recycles old, tired proposals that have been refuted and rebuked. Among other unacceptable proposals, the administration would eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s affordable housing goals, reduce access to credit for historically underserved borrowers, and neglect to increase funding for the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF). These efforts will be met with strong opposition from the housing and civil rights community - including NLIHC – and by bipartisan congressional leaders who understand that housing finance reform must include both enforceable and measurable mechanisms to ensure that access to credit is enjoyed by all segments of the housing market and a significant increase in funding to address the affordable housing needs of the lowest-income renters.
Our country’s housing crisis continues to worsen, most negatively impacting the lowest-income people. Nationally, there is a shortage of 7 million affordable homes for the lowest-income people. Nearly 8 million of the lowest-income households are severely rent-burdened, paying more than half of their incomes on their housing, and another 500,000 people have no homes at all. The national Housing Trust Fund, funded through a small assessment on Fannie’s and Freddie’s books of business, was created precisely to meet this need, to fill the gap of affordable homes for the lowest-income people. Any housing finance reform effort should increase funding for the HTF to at least $3.5 billion and maintain a broad, measurable and enforceable commitment to access and affordability throughout the housing market.
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About NLIHC: Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, the National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to achieving socially just public policy that ensure people with the lowest income in the United States have affordable and decent homes.