We’re at a crossroads. We can continue with the status quo or we can take steps to ensure all families in our country — including families of color — have access to opportunity. Congress must make significant investments in housing programs, including the first-generation targeted down payment assistance program in the Build Back Better Act.
“Solving our housing affordability crisis requires multiple actions by all levels of government and the private sector, and an invigorated role for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is one of them,” said George W. “Mac” McCarthy, President of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the lead convener of the coalition. “The Underserved Mortgage Markets Coalition seeks to hold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accountable and uphold their founding purpose: to bring housing finance opportunities to American families not traditionally served by the private market.”
A group of affordable housing organizations has called on the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to compel government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to improve their “Duty to Serve” (DTS) proposals before approving them.
Some housing advocates worry that a tax credit, which the consumer wouldn’t get until their next tax bill, would only help those who can already afford to buy a home and would further drive up prices. “We have never figured out how to put that money on the closing table,” said David Dworkin, president and chief executive of the National Housing Conference.
A new housing coalition—the Underserved Mortgage Markets Coalition—formed by 20 affordable housing organizations, recently wrote to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), urging them to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “substantially improve their Duty to Serve proposals before the regulator approves them.”
Twenty affordable housing groups teamed up to tell the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) its requirements for the government sponsored enterprises to support manufactured and rural housing, and preserve affordable housing don’t make the grade.
“We are on pins and needles as we await some of the decisions being made at the White House,” Chairwoman Waters said at the National Housing Conference event. “There are so many people who work every day, but they cannot afford the high cost of rental housing, and they are simply seeking some help from their government.”
“A tax credit for all first-time homebuyers is going to expand the racial homeownership gap, because it is essentially increasing homeownership in an environment where people of color already have so many other disadvantages,” said David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, an affordable housing advocacy group.
“They’re not that expensive, and I don’t understand how you could possibly focus a bill on your highest priorities and not include racial equity,” said David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference. “How do we tell people ‘Sorry, it’s not your bus,’ when everyone knows it’s the last bus?”
“[The LIFT Act and Waters’ down payment assistance] have to go together. Our first priority is creating homeowners and our second priority is to accelerate wealth building.” – David M. Dworkin
