Housing Trust Fund Not Expected to Help Low-Income Housing Until 2010
From Multi-Housing News
By Anuradha Kher, Online News Editor
Washington, D.C.–The national Housing Trust Fund is the first new federal rental housing production to specifically assist the lowest income households in the U.S. since 1974. Included in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 that was signed into law a few weeks earlier, the fund is not expected help in construction of new affordable housing units until 2010.
“The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has 12 months to promulgate and allocate the funds, after which they have 60 days to allocate the funds to states,” Linda Couch, deputy director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), which led the National Housing Trust Fund campaign, tells MHN. “In the first year, which is 2009, 100 percent of the funds will go to the Hope for Homeownership program, which is the mortgage foreclosure prevention provision of the Recovery Act.
“The second year, 50 percent will go to Hope for Homeownership and in the third year, 25 percent will go to Hope for Homeownership. So we don’t expect to see any money flowing for low-income housing and rehabilitation until 2010,” says Couch.
