White House and Treasury announce new actions to increase housing supply

Key Takeaways

On February 29, the White House announced several new actions to increase housing supply and lower costs, building off of the White House’s Housing Supply Action Plan and Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights released last year. On March 5, the U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury) eased rules on pandemic-era relief programs to enable the construction of more affordable housing units.

Last week, the White House announced the following actions to provide faster and more flexible federal housing assistance:

• The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to publish a proposed rule to streamline and modernize the regulations for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME).
• HUD recently updated the CDBG in Support of Housing Activities notice to clarify that communities may use CDBG funds for the acquisition of manufactured housing units, services to homeowners of manufactured housing units, and investments in infrastructure and resilience for manufactured housing communities.
• Last month, the IRS released guidance clarifying that returned low-income housing tax credits that were allocated to disaster areas in 2021 and 2022 can be reallocated for any proposed LIHTC project.
  Through an agreement with HUD, Treasury is indefinitely extending the Federal Financing Bank’s (FFB) financing support for a risk-sharing initiative between
• HUD and state and local housing finance agencies to lower the cost of creating and preserving affordable housing.
• HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) published policies that local and state governments can adopt to reduce eviction filings.

This week, Treasury announced further actions to ease rules on unspent pandemic-era aid to be spent on affordable housing:

• The U.S. Department of Treasury (Treasury) is updating its guidance for the American Rescue Plan Act’s (ARPA) State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) to support housing projects serving families up to 120 percent of the area’s median income, a jump from the previous 65 percent. 
• Treasury is announcing new clarifications to the ARPA’s Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program which will make clear that qualifying recipients can use remaining funds on a broad range of uses to fund affordable housing serving very low-income families.

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