Affordable Housing Lack Funding

The National Low Income Housing Coalition, along with four individual plaintiffs and the NY-based Right to the City Alliance are going after the Federal Housing Finance Agency for failing to fund the National Housing Trust Fund.

The suit, filed July 9, names the Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Edward DeMarco, for failing to uphold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s legal requirement to make contributions to the National Housing Trust Fund.

“The time has long past for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be supporting the National Housing Trust Fund as Congress meant for them to do. The delay caused by the Federal Housing Finance Agency is unconscionable given the growing shortage of housing that is affordable for the lowest income Americans,” said Sheila Crowley, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Housing Trust Fund (HTF) is an affordable housing program “to increase and preserve the supply of decent, safe, and sanitary affordable housing for extremely low- and very low-income households, including homeless families.” It was established as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 signed by President George W. Bush.

According to NLIHC, the law requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac transfer a percentage of the value of their new business to the National Housing Trust Fund, a requirement that was temporarily suspended when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken into government conservatorship in 2008. But the Securities and Exchange Commission reports that new business activity for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2012 was approximately $1.4 trillion, meaning approximately $382 million should have gone to the National Housing Trust Fund.

The lawsuit calls for “all suspended payments since the first quarter of 2012 should be applied to the National Housing Trust Fund.”

“Over two-thirds (68%) of our country’s poorest households have to spend more than half of their income on housing costs. For every ten extremely low income households, there are only three affordable and available homes,” notes NLIHC.

For the 7.1 million American households for whom even a modest rental home is unaffordable and unavailable, life is a struggle for families who find themselves making choices between food and rent.

According to the 2011 American Housing Survey profile released on Thursday July 11, U.S. homeowners paid a median price of $110,000 in 2011, paid a median monthly mortgage of  $1,015, and monthly expenditures that averaged $151 for real estate taxes, $121 for electricity and $58 for property insurance.