NLIHC Releases Getting Started: First Homes Being Built with Housing Trust Fund Awards
NLIHC released today a new report, Getting Started: First Homes Being Built with 2016 National Housing Trust Fund Awards. The report details how the first national Housing Trust Fund (HTF) dollars are being put to use to build, rehabilitate and preserve homes for extremely low income households, especially for seniors, people with disabilities, the homeless, and those at risk of homelessness. The report also clearly lays out the need for a much greater investment in the HTF. NLIHC urges all organizations and elected officials to join over 1,500 others in signing onto a letter calling for an investment of at least $3.5 billion annually in the HTF. Read the report here and sign the letter here.
The HTF provides block grants to states to build, rehabilitate, and preserve housing affordable to extremely low income (ELI) households, those with incomes at or less than the poverty level or 30% of the area median income. There is a national shortage of 7.2 million rental homes affordable and available to ELI households — for every 100 such households, there are only 35 affordable and available apartments. Eight million of the lowest income households in America spend more than half of their incomes on housing, leaving them few resources for food, healthcare, and other necessities and at great risk of homelessness.
The Getting Started report summarizes information from 42 states that have made grant awards of 2016 HTF money to build or preserve more than 1,500 rental homes for extremely low income households in 129 projects across the country. States are prioritizing projects that will serve people experiencing homelessness, people with disabilities, elderly individuals, veterans, and other special needs populations.
Read the full Getting Started: First Homes Being Built with 2016 National Housing Trust Fund Awards report at: http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/NHTF_Getting-Started_2018.pdf
Read and sign the letter to Congress at: http://cqrcengage.com/nlihc/app/sign-petition?1&engagementId=297914
To see if your organization is already signed on, please see our most recent list here: http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/HTF_Defense_Letter_and_List_091218.pdf