Washington Policymakers Sound the Alarm Over Affordable Housing
Officials from HUD, FHFA and the GSEs all spoke of the need to support affordable housing as part of their missions.
SAN DIEGO—One goal that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is focused on this year is evaluating large loan limits, according to Julia Gordon, HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner. “We can count on seeing action there sometime in the near future.” Gordon made her comments at the MBA CREF 23 Conference and Expo’s opening general session on Tuesday.
Presumably the action will further the agency in its goal of preserving and expanding the US housing stock as the country struggles with an acute shortage of housing.
“Housing is the platform on which you build your daily lives,” she said. “Having a roof over your head should be a basic human right.”
And yet, “things aren’t lining up the way they should for us to go full steam ahead,” she continued. “When we talk about supply and affordability challenges, we are no longer talking about the lowest income. We have seen the news that about half of the renters in this country have rents that are now unaffordable.”
Indeed, affordable housing was the dominant theme running throughout the presentations this morning.
“The thing we really want to work on this year at FHFA [the Federal Housing Finance Agency] are affordability issues,” said Sandra Thompson, FHFA director. “For those who are at the lower level, what can we do to be helpful to provide affordable properties for those families/?”
And Kevin Palmer, Senior Vice President and Head of Multifamily, Freddie Mac, said the GSE wants to lean in in an appropriate way to support affordable housing—especially on the supply side—but also to make sure they are properly managing the risk.
“The pandemic created extreme affordability issues,” Palmer said. “We are in a housing recession and softening in the overall market and we expect that to continue.”
Check out the stories below to see already published coverage of the MBA CREF 23 event.
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