The national Housing Trust Fund (HTF) is estimated to receive $739.6 million for 2022, based on figures presented in Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s 10-K forms recently submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This allocation will be a modest increase from the $689.7 million provided for 2021. Fannie and Freddie will provide this information to their conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA), which will officially announce total amounts available for the HTF and the Capital Magnet Fund (CMF) in early March. FHFA will send the official HTF tabulations to HUD, which in turn will apply the total to the statutory formula for allocating HTF to each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories.
The “Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008” (HERA) created the national Housing Trust Fund and stipulated that the initial dedicated source of revenue for the HTF and the CMF is to derive from an annual set-aside of 4.2 basis points (0.042%) for each dollar of the unpaid principal on Fannie’s and Freddie’s new business purchases. New business purchases consist of single-family and multifamily mortgage loans purchased during the year, and single-family and multifamily mortgage loans underlying mortgage-backed securities issued during the year.
The primary purpose of the HTF is to produce, rehabilitate, preserve, and operate rental housing for extremely low-income households (ELI), those with incomes less than 30% of the area median income (AMI) or less than the federal poverty line, whichever is higher. The HTF is a block grant to states. The funds are distributed by formula to states based on four factors that only consider renter household needs. Seventy-five percent of the value of the formula goes to the two factors that reflect the needs of ELI renters because the HTF statute requires the formula to give priority to ELI renters. The other two factors concern the renter needs of very low-income (VLI) households, which are households with incomes between 31% and 50% of AMI. A state may choose to award up to 10% of its annual HTF allocation to homeowner activities; to date no state has done so.
Read more about the HTF on page 3-2 of NLIHC’s 2021 Advocates’ Guide, and on NLIHC’s two HTF webpages, one providing basic information, and another providing state-specific information.
HUD’s HTF website is at: https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/htf
Fannie’s 10-K is at: https://bit.ly/3oXT4FO
Freddie’s 10-K is at: https://bit.ly/3I5Zdaw