NHC appointed Pamela Hughes Patenaude to its Board of Governors this week. “NHC’s Board brings the best and the brightest of housing professionals and Pam is the best person to continue to grow our network,” said Steve O’Connor, Chair of the Board of Governors. “Pam’s broad range of leadership experience in housing policy, real estate, and disaster recovery will make a significant contribution to our work.”

Patenaude served as the Deputy Secretary of HUD, where she managed the $52 billion agency’s day-to-day operations while overseeing disaster relief in Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida, Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands, California, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Patenaude is an Independent Director of loanDepot, Inc. (NYSE: LDI) and a member of the Audit Committee. Patenaude is an Independent Director for Target Hospitality, Corp. (NASDAQ: TH) and is Chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and a member of the Audit Committee. Additionally, Patenaude serves on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity International as well as the Board of Directors for the Bipartisan Policy Center. Patenaude is a Trustee and Vice Chairman of the Home Builders Institute (HBI). Patenaude is also a Social Impact Advisory Board member for the Center Creek Housing Funds. Patenaude is the Principal of Granite Housing Strategies, LLC, serving as a strategic advisor for clients engaged in real estate development, affordable housing, and disaster recovery management. She also serves as Co-Chair of NHC’s National Advisory Council and is a recipient of the 2022 Housing Visionary Award.

“The National Housing Conference has been instrumental in formulating effective solutions to address the nation’s housing needs for more than nine decades,” said Patenaude. “I am honored to rejoin the NHC Board of Governors and look forward to making meaningful contributions to the critical housing policy debates.”

 

“We are excited to have Pam Patenaude rejoin our board of governors,” said David M. Dworkin, president and CEO of NHC. “As Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Pam was a highly respected voice whose collaborative leadership style was recognized by members on both sides of the aisle. Throughout her distinguished career, Pam has built bipartisan coalitions to achieve sustainable solutions to America’s affordable housing and community development needs. We are grateful to have her back,” Dworkin stated.

FHFA issued a final rule for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises) that establishes benchmark levels for their multifamily housing goals for 2023-2024. The newly issued levels use a new percentage-based methodology outlined in the agency’s proposed rule, published in August. Rather than measuring the multifamily goals by the total number of affordable units in each project financed by the Enterprises, the new rule considers the percentage of each Enterprise’s annual multifamily loan purchases that are affordable to each income category.

FHFA set the percentages at 61 percent for low-income, 12 percent for very low-income, and 2.5 percent for small multifamily low-income properties. These are properties consisting of 5-50 units. FHFA said these goals help ensure that the Enterprises responsibly promote equitable access to affordable rental housing across the county.

“The new methodology will make the multifamily housing goals more responsive to market conditions and better position the Enterprises to fulfill their affordable housing mission requirements each year,” said FHFA Director Sandra Thompson.

This week, FHFA and the CFPB jointly published loan-level data for public use through the National Survey of Mortgage Originations (NSMO) that showed strong borrower interest rate awareness. This update includes nationally sampled data from 2013 to 2020 on mortgage performance and credit information of borrowers. The survey information collected by FHFA and the CFPB gathers data based on borrowers’ experiences, mortgage market perceptions, and expectations to reveal housing and mortgage trends.

Key findings reveal the pandemic’s impacts on borrowers, who reported the importance of digital processes and interruptions in mortgage closings. For example, in 2020, 69 percent of borrowers rated themselves as “very familiar” with available interest rates, an increase of 14 percent from 2019. The share of borrowers who said they were satisfied they received the lowest qualifying rate also increased from 67 percent to 75 percent between 2019 and 2020.

Additionally, those who refinanced in 2020 had higher household incomes and owned more stocks, bonds, and mutual funds than those who refinanced in 2019.

“This data should be helpful to analysts and policymakers in understanding the complete experience of mortgage borrowers and identifying what challenges may still exist in mortgage lending,” said Saty Patrabansh, FHFA Associate Director for the Office of Data and Statistics.

On Monday, Governors Kathy Hochul (NY-D) and Gavin Newsom (CA-D) sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-D) and U.S. Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY-D) encouraging them to support policies to increase affordable housing production. Newsom and Hochul asked Pelosi and Schumer to expand state housing board programs and to lower the “50 percent test” to 25 percent to increase the number of state-issued, bond-financed affordable housing projects. The governors also asked the federal government to restore the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit) that expired at the end of 2021 to 12.5 percent.

"Our housing affordability challenges are surmountable, but only with meaningful intergovernmental collaboration and long-term, sustainable investments," the letter reads. "California and New York have developed robust housing plans informed by data, the scaling of innovative programming, and collaboration with our partners at the federal and local levels of government."

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published its OCC Mortgage Metrics Report, Third Quarter 2022, showing first-lien mortgage performance improved last quarter. The report comprises 22 percent of all outstanding U.S. residential mortgage debt. It showed that 97.2 percent of mortgages were current and performing at the end of Q3 2022, an improvement from 95.6 percent the previous year. Also, the percentage of seriously delinquent mortgages declined from 3.1 percent in Q3 2021 to 1.3 percent this year. That’s down from 1.5 percent in Q2 2022. In total, servicers initiated 9,835 foreclosures during the quarter. While that’s below Q2 2022’s volume, it’s higher than the previous year. Still, Q3 2022’s new foreclosure volume is lower than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, a group of 13 housing coalitions sent a letter to the chairperson and ranking members of the U.S. House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees asking for meaningful investments in housing production as part of any end-of-year spending package. The letter requests two updates to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit) program. First, the group would like an extension of the 12.5-percent increase to the 9-percent Housing Credit that expired in 2021. Secondly, they want to lower the “50 percent test” to 25 percent to allow states to produce and preserve more bond-financed developments. These two provisions would create an estimated 1.5 million affordable units to help address the 3.8-million-unit shortage of affordable homes in the U.S.

“This is not an insurmountable problem,” the letter reads. “Congress right now has the opportunity to unlock vital financing for affordable housing developments that will produce and preserve high-quality, below-market-rate homes for years to come.”

HUD announced it’s awarding more than $13 million in Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) Renewal and Replacement Grants to 13 cities, states, and nonprofits. Awardees include the City and County of San Francisco, Kentucky Housing Corporation, the City of Baltimore, and the Rhode Island Office of Housing and Community Development. You can see the complete list of awardees here.

On Thursday, the White House announced that White House officials from the National Economic Council, Domestic Policy Council, and Office of Intergovernmental Affairs met with legislative leaders from ten states to discuss housing affordability. The meeting comes two months after the Administration shared updates about President Biden’s Housing Supply Action Plan, which included increased partnerships between the federal government and state and local governments.

The Federal Reserve Board’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised its benchmark rate by 50 basis points after meeting last week. The FOMC raised its rate from 4.25 percent to a 4.5 percent target range. The announcement came after new Bureau of Labor Statistics data on Tuesday showed the Consumer Price Index rose 0.1 percent in November. Shelter contributed the most to this inflationary increase, rising 7.1 percent over the last year. According to the announcement, shelter accounted for nearly half of the total price increase in all items except food and energy.

“Housing supply deficits, made worse by increased interest rates, are likely to blunt the anti-inflationary impact of the Fed’s rate hike as the housing supply continues to shrink, offsetting the impact of interest rate-driven reductions in demand,” NHC said in a September press release.

The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund updated its New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) allocation application frequently asked questions document. The updates include new guidance in response to questions about CDFI Fund’s Award Management Information System, such as how applicants should discuss how their NMTC investments would benefit low-income families and communities. Applications for 2022 NMTC allocations are due by Jan. 26.