Congress

The Pew Charitable Trusts recently released a study regarding the costs and benefits of current housing-related tax expenditures.

In response to a year long Washington Post investigation titled “Million Dollar Wasteland” a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers is calling on Congress to probe the nation’s housing-construction program for the poor, citing years-long delays and other breakdowns that have thwarted the production of hundreds of affordable-housing projects.

Representatives Gary Miller (R-CA) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) have introduced new legislation (HR 1859) that would create a government-owned credit facility to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Reps. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) last week introduced the Creating American Prosperity through Preservation Act of 2011 (H.R. 2479).

U.S. Representatives Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) and Ronald Kind (D-Wis.) last week introduced the Renewable Energy for a Brighter Future Act (H.R. 2391).

Affordable rental housing is the subject of Department of Housing and Urban Development’s spring 2011 issue of Evidence Matters. The issue centers on the role rental housing policy plays in housing and community development.

On June 15 Senators Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) has introduced legislation to provide relief to states that suffered damage by the series of tornadoes and flooding that have struck the south east.

We are pleased to announce that online registration and hotel reservations are now open for the National Council of Affordable Housing Market Analysts Affordable Housing Underwriting Conference & Annual Meeting.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government announced a FY-2012 spending bill this week that includes $183 million for the CDFI Fund, with $12 million set aside for the Native American CDFI initiative and $22.9 million set aside for administration.

An new report by The Real Estate Roundtable, the U.S. Green Building Council and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that the Obama Administration’s Better Building Initiative would create more than 114,000 private-sector jobs, 77,000 of which would be in the construction industry.

Two federal lawmakers this week sent a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requesting detailed accounting of more than 1,000 affordable-housing construction projects funded by the Department’s HOME Program.

On June 3, the House Financial Services Committee held an oversight hearing on the performance of HUD’s HOME program in creating affordable homes and strengthening communities.