Housing Department of Washington County Implementing new Regional Supportive Housing Services (SHS) Program |
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The Department of Housing Services in Washington County which encompasses the Housing Authority is standing up the new regionally funded Supportive Housing Services (SHS) measure. The department expects to receive around $50 million in new funding in year 1 and it should increase from there. As part of the funding, staff will be working on building out a new regional voucher program with expectations to issue around 1,700 new subsidies in the upcoming three years. The department will also be focused on providing 250 new year round shelter beds and building out an equitable system of care. The department is currently working on signing contracts with 13 new service providers. In partnership with Metro Council, the housing authority purchased a hotel in Aloha and is converting it to 54 units of permanent supportive housing with 24/7 staffing onsite. The department also led the process of partnering with the Oregon Community Foundation to purchase a hotel in Hillsboro and converted it to a COVID 19 respite shelter and non-congregate homeless shelter. Over the next year, the department looks forward to finding innovative ways to combine its new MTW housing authority flexibility with regional and local resources to best serve those in the community. |
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FHFA, HUD Sign Historic Fair Housing Agreement |
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Government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks are facing tighter oversight from their regulators.
Last Thursday, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to strengthen their enforcement of the Fair Housing Act that protects individuals from housing discrimination.
The agencies said that the “first-of-its-kind collaborative agreement” promotes information sharing, coordination on investigations, compliance reviews, and the ongoing monitoring of Fannie and Freddie. FHFA and HUD will consult with one another on current and potential investigations of fair housing and fair lending laws. Speaking about the agreement, HUD secretary Marcia Fudge commented that stepping up their collective fair housing oversight of the enterprises will make an enormous impact on lives and communities
“Today’s signing is an important and historic step to advance and strengthen the enforcement of our nation’s fair housing and fair lending requirements. FHFA oversees entities that have significant control over a large share of the mortgage market,” she said. “We are prioritizing the work required to remove barriers that have created separate and unequal neighborhoods and limited access to housing opportunity and wealth building. I look forward to working with FHFA to make a meaningful impact in this space.”
“FHFA does not tolerate housing discrimination,” said FHFA acting director Sandra Thompson. “Today’s MOU allows FHFA and HUD to share information and resources to improve fair lending oversight over the mortgage finance system. I am pleased to work with secretary Fudge on the important work of fulfilling the Fair Housing Act’s promise of equal access to safe, decent, and affordable housing for all Americans.”
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As a housing and community development professional, you have valuable insights to share with Congress. NAHRO wants to make it easy for you to advocate on Capitol Hill.
There are at least three ways to become a NAHRO advocate:
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Become a Congressional Contact
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Send an advocacy letter through the Action Alert Center
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Download the NAHRO Advocacy App
Congress needs to hear from you as they finalize the American Jobs Plan. Urge your representatives to include housing programs in the final infrastructure package. To help us target specific members of Congress and to receive exclusive advocacy alerts, become a Congressional Contact at www.NAHRO.org/contacts.
It is easier than ever to send a NAHRO advocacy message. You can send a pre-drafted email from our Action Alert Center (www.NAHRO.org/advocate). When you download the NAHRO Advocacy App, you can look up information on your representatives and send advocacy letters directly from your smart phone. Now is the time to speak up for the housing and community development programs that matter most to your community!
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Joe Biden's Homebuyer Tax Credit Not Enough to Fix America's Housing Crisis |
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Joan Vieldhouse has been renting her three-bedroom home in Philadelphia for years.
The only thing stopping her from buying her first home? "Money," she told Newsweek.
Vieldhouse, 56, said her credit "tanked" after she was recently out of work for a couple of months. "I couldn't pay all my bills on time," she explained. "I'm struggling to get that back up." A homebuyer tax credit like the one promised by President Joe Biden during his campaign would make a "big difference" to when Vieldhouse could start thinking about buying a home, she said. "That would be fantastic...I could probably do something with that," Vieldhouse, who works as a recovery specialist, said. Two bills have been floated in Congress that would help Americans buy homes through either a tax credit or down payment assistance. The First-Time Homebuyer Act would create a refundable tax credit worth up to 10 percent of the purchase price, or $15,000, for the purchase of a home.
But some advocates say such incentives are not enough to fix the nation's housing crisis, and argue that far more is needed to close the racial wealth and homeownership gaps. Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who introduced the bill in the House with Rep. Jimmy Panetta, said the legislation is just one element of "big, bold housing agenda" aiming "to combat the housing affordability crisis and address centuries of overtly racist and discriminatory housing policies that have left massive wealth, homeownership, and opportunity gaps between white communities and communities of color."
In a statement to Newsweek, he said: "As housing prices and demand continue to rise to historic levels, we need to do more to create opportunities for those who've been locked out of homeownership." Read More.....
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The Eventual End of the Eviction Moratorium Will Hurt Renters — And Not In The Way You Expect |
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An estimated 3 million households nationwide are at risk of eviction, but not all of those families will be displaced from their homes. The Biden administration just extended a lifeline to struggling renters, but without more federal action the nation’s rental housing market could face serious pressure in the months to come.
On Aug. 3, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new eviction moratorium to replace the ban that expired at the end of July. Unlike the previous moratorium, which was first enacted last September under the Trump administration, the new federal moratorium was targeted, applying only in areas of the country with high rates of transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19.
The new moratorium is currently set to expire on Oct. 3, but the actual end date could come sooner. The prior moratorium faced significant legal challenges from landlords and Realtors groups. In June, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the moratorium on the basis that the moratorium was set to expire soon, but conservative justices on the court signaled that they considered the ban to be unconstitutional. Already, federal judges have indicated they will re-examine these cases in light of the newly announced moratorium.
Whenever that day comes, the end of the eviction moratorium could be just the beginning of renters’ troubles, as the nation’s ongoing eviction crisis is set to have large ripple effects across the broader housing market.
“Based on what we are seeing with single-family rental homes, the various eviction moratoria over the past year have likely contributed to the supply challenges in the market,” said David Howard, executive director of the National Rental Home Council, a trade group that represents landlords who own single-family homes.
The economic recovery has not put all renters back in good standing in terms of their rental payments. Over 7.4 million households are behind on rent, according to survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau — and that figure has risen since June. Of these, around 3 million households say they are at risk of eviction.
Determining how many of these households would lose their homes in an eviction once the moratorium’s protections cease is not straightforward, according to economists. “There is significant uncertainty around what the number of eventual evictions will be because we are in such unprecedented circumstances,” said Chris Glynn, senior managing economist at Zillow Z, -2.70% ZG, -2.68%.
Much will depend on how quickly emergency rental assistance is distributed to the tenants and landlords who need it. Congress appropriated billions of dollars in aid for struggling renters, but as of the end of July most of that money had yet to make its way to the people who need it. The Biden administration reissued the eviction moratorium to offer these Americans a better shot at getting that assistance. Read More.....
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New Two-Building Project Could Bring Affordable Housing to Tacoma’s Lincoln District |
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Tacoma’s Lincoln District could soon be home to a new affordable housing development.
The Low Income Housing Institute is in the early stages of planning to redevelop the Tat Plaza site on South 38th Street to make way for two new apartment buildings. The site is near Lincoln High School and the former Lincoln Hardware.
The mixed-use project will be two phases. The first phase is a 75-unit building for seniors on the east side of the site. The existing building will be demolished. The second phase is a 72-unit building on the west side of the site.
As part of the project, the center would also provide case management services to the building residents and host activities, events and programming for residents and community members, Strickland said.
LIHI already owns the parcels for the project and has applied for $8.3 million in local funding from the City of Tacoma and Pierce County for Phase 1. This fall, LIHI will also be applying for $4 million in funding from the State of Washington Housing Trust Fund and for $18 million in low income housing tax credit funding from the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. Phase 2 funding will be applied for starting in 2022, likely for similar amounts, Strickland said.
Construction for Phase 1 would begin in 2022 if the funding is awarded this year. LIHI hopes to start construction in 2023 for Phase 2. Read More.....
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In search of the Prescription for Homelessness
in Anchorage
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In this data-driven age, analytics inform everything from how we shop to the way our favorite sports teams prepare for the playoffs. Today, the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness is using applied data in a different way: to identify ways to get Anchorage residents out of poverty and into stable, permanent housing.
“People always ask, ‘What’s the answer to end homelessness or end hunger?’” said Bean’s Cafe Executive Director Lisa Sauder, who serves on the coalition’s advisory committee. “There’s no one answer, because people get there in a lot of different ways.” By tracking paths into and out of homelessness, advocates say they hope to find real solutions to the crisis that has been one of Anchorage’s most challenging issues for years. It’s just one of the creative ways of thinking that service providers say is necessary to solve the city’s greatest health needs. Five years ago, Providence Health & Services Alaska approached Anchorage homeless service providers with a question: How could we partner with you on a community-based strategy that will result in a more coordinated way to reduce homelessness?
“They conducted community-wide strategic planning efforts and came back with a proposal on how they believed we could affect real systems change,” said Nathan Johnson, regional director of community health investment for Providence Health & Services Alaska.
This involved client-focused navigation services, rapidly rehousing families experiencing homelessness, critical safety net services, landlord liaisons, and building out coordinated data entry via a shared homelessness management information system (HMIS).
Providence invested in that strategic plan, and the coalition now maintains the HMIS and an accompanying dashboard that gives service providers near real-time information to help the system be more responsive to emerging needs of Alaskans experiencing homelessness. While the idea of data itself may not sound very exciting, the results can be. Bean’s Cafe recently completed a Geographic Information System project that mapped income and use of food program benefits and overlaid it with every food source in the city to identify areas where it’s harder to access healthy foods. That data will be used to deploy a mobile food distribution truck to the areas most in need -- a much more precise and targeted approach.
“That’s a very different way of doing it,” Sauder said.
Since then, many other partners have invested and the result is a greater focus on data and systems change. Anchorage is now a pilot community for Built For Zero, a national movement of cities that use a disciplined approach to data to inform community-wide response to homelessness. The goal is to reach “functional zero,” a sustained end to chronic homelessness for a population. So far, 14 cities have reached functional zero among veterans, and five have achieved functional zero for the chronically homeless. Read More.....
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PNRC NAHRO Members Save $$ and the Region Earns $$
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How does it work?
When registering, please use code: PNRC2020 (All CAPS)
and your $10 discount will automatically be applied, it’s that simple!
Please note: this code must be used when registering!
It cannot be retroactively applied.
What is Virtual Classroom?
Multi-day training delivered in a modular and a web-based format. Participants register individually and access the sessions with a direct email. Sessions are typically 3 hours (1:30-4:30pm ET) and spread out. This allows participants to balance learning with other work responsibilities. Attendance is recorded and upon successful completion, CEUs are applied towards certification requirements. Distance learnings are meant to be interactive. Participants will engage with the faculty member by discussions, polls and utilizing a chat feature.
Available Virtual Classrooms:
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For more information, contact NAHRO Professional Development at
202 580 7211 or
OR;
PNRC NAHRO Regional Service Officer 202.580.7203
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YOU COULD HAVE FEATURED YOUR AGENCY HERE!!!
We want to fill this newsletter with articles and pictures about you, but we can't do that unless you send them in. Send your pictures and articles to pnrc@nahro.org by September 13th to be featured in next month's newsletter!!
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NAHRO 2021 Leadership Election: |
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September 9th @ 1 p.m. EST
The NAHRO leadership changes hands biennially when NAHRO membership elects a President and a Senior Vice President. This election is for the 2021-2023 leadership term. Join NAHRO's Nominating and Election Committee on Thursday, September 9th at 1 p.m. EST for the Candidate forum.
Announced candidates to date are:
- For President: Current Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the Oakland Housing Authority Patricia Wells
- For Senior Vice President: Executive Director of Baltimore County Office of Housing Marsha J. Parham-Green, and CEO/Executive Director of Fort Wayne Housing Authority George Guy
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