WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV. 4, 2021—The National Community Stabilization Trust (NCST) applauds legislative text released yesterday that marks a groundbreaking, comprehensive commitment to affordable housing – both rental and homeownership – as a means to reverse decades of community disinvestment, close the racial wealth gap, and offer first-generation homebuyers an opportunity to build wealth.
NCST is particularly proud to see the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (Neighborhood Homes) and the Community Revitalization and Restoration Fund (CRRF) included in the text. Neighborhoods Homes is a new federal tax credit to fuel the development and rehabilitation of 500,000 single-family homes in underserved urban and rural communities. CRRF is a $3 billion innovative grant program that will improve housing and community infrastructure in neighborhoods. Neighborhood Homes and CRRF have been top priorities for NCST and our Coalition partners.
“Rehabilitating existing homes and building new ones can prevent or even reverse a trajectory of decline in a community,” said Julia Gordon, President of NCST. “With affordable housing inventory extremely tight right now, these programs offer a win-win of revitalizing neighborhoods and increasing housing supply, thereby providing new opportunities for families to access homeownership. New supply is critical given another provision in this bill – a historic investment in helping first-generation homebuyers access mortgage credit.”
Neighborhood Homes addresses a particularly vexing market dynamic: in many communities, the cost for developers to rehab blighted properties or build new homes exceeds the resale price. This new tax credit would help bridge that gap by enabling investors to recoup up to 35% of the eligible development costs, thereby encouraging private investment, creating affordable homeownership opportunities, supporting good choices for the environment, and investing in urban, suburban, and rural communities.
CRRF melds a Biden Administration proposal and legislation introduced by Representatives Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) to create a $3 billion competitive grant program at HUD to provide disinvested communities with the flexible resources to build back better. Through partnerships with nonprofits, local governments, land banks, and community land trusts, communities struggling with blight, vacancy, unemployment, and poverty would create plans to improve their neighborhoods for existing residents.
“CRRF will provide disinvested communities with the flexible resources they need to ensure an equitable economic recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, which has disproportionately affected low-income families,” said Kristin Siglin, Vice President of Policy and Partnerships at NCST. “This program will amplify the impact of the Neighborhood Homes tax credit and spur much-needed comprehensive housing and community development strategies.”
In addition to these two programs, the Build Back Better Act makes the following critical investments in affordable housing:
- $10 billion to support down payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers, along with additional funding for several other innovative programs to increase homeownership in currently underserved populations
- $24 billion to expand housing vouchers to hundreds of thousands of households
- $65 billion to preserve our nation’s public housing infrastructure
- $10 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships program
- $15 billion for the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF) to build and preserve over 150,000 homes affordable to extremely low-income households
- $750 million to create a “Housing Investment Fund” at the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
- $5 billion to address lead paint and other health hazards in the homes
- $3 billion for Community Development Block Grants
