General News

Effective July 1, 2020, the Virginia Fair Housing law was updated to include four new protected classes; source of income, status as a veteran, gender identity and sexual orientation in addition to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, elderliness, familial status and disability.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) and the Departments of Housing (DOH) and Family and Support Services (DFSS) announced an expanded Housing Assistance Grant program and a new online portal to assist Chicagoans who have been adversely impacted by the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The California Department of Housing and Community Development (CalHCD) released a NOFA for $600 million in Homekey funds. Building on the success of Project Roomkey, Homekey is the next phase in the state’s response to protecting Californians experiencing homelessness who are at high risk for serious illness and are impacted by COVID-19.

The Urban Institute argues that the new CRA regulations suffer from four big problems: (1) There is no evidence of the impact of the new regulations; (2) The primary metric used for assessing CRA compliance neglects community needs; (3) The regulations create a limited and unforgiving test on retail and community development lending, with limited community coverage; and (4) Public data will be lost while bank reporting burdens will increase.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition released its annual Out of Reach report, which shows that even before the onset of the COVID-19 public health and economic crisis, millions of workers were struggling to afford their homes.

The DC Council voted to approve the fiscal year 2021 budget, which includes a ten-year extension of DC’s rent control program and $9 million in additional funding for the Housing Production Trust Fund.

The Connecticut Housing Finance Agency (CHFA) extended the COVID-19 multifamily financial relief period through December 31, 2020. Any mortgagor of a multifamily rental housing development in CHFA’s portfolio experiencing financial distress due to COVID-19, beyond the financial ability of the mortgagor to correct or mitigate, may contact CHFA to request its assistance. For more information, […]

On June 30, 2020 Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law S. 8192B, which prohibits evicting tenants for unpaid rent accrued between March 7 and the compete reopening of their area, so long as a tenant can prove in court that they experience financial hardship during that period.  A judge can still issue a money judgement against the tenant.

The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Coalition has published its latest annual progress report for the NMTC Program.   The 2019 survey findings show that program participants – from investors to community development organizations to the CDFI Fund – continue to improve and refine the program’s efficiency and impact in low-income communities.

On June 12 the Bipartsan Policy Center published a new brief entitled “Housing Assistance is a COVID-19 Response and Racial Justice Priority.”  The brief finds that the public health and economic crisis that COVID-19 triggered has put millions of low-income households at risk of eviction and homelessness and has widened racial disparities in housing and health outcomes.

Rural community leaders, employers, affordable housing providers, developers, lenders, planners, policy makers and residents are invited to learn more and provide final input prior to the launch of the competitive application process for the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority’s rural affordable workforce housing pilot.

The California Housing Partnership recently launched its Housing Needs Dashboard, a new online data tool to discover and compare housing data for every California county and the state overall