Tag Archives: Housing Supply Action Plan

Biden Administration, Housing, News & Photo Features

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Takes New Actions to Lower Housing Costs by Cutting Red Tape to Build More Housing

Actions include reforms to save developers time and money on federal projects and funds to encourage state and local governments to reduce barriers to affordable housing

Drawings for innovative affordable senior housing in Long Island based on shared-units. The Biden-Harris Administration is implementing reforms to save developers time and money on federal projects and funds to encourage state and local governments to reduce barriers to affordable housing © Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

The Biden-Harris Administration is announcing major new actions to build on progress in addressing the affordable housing crisis and further implement its Housing Supply Action Plan. Actions include reforms to save developers time and money on federal projects and funds to encourage state and local governments to reduce barriers to affordable housing. This fact sheet is provided by the White House:

Since launching its all-of-government Housing Supply Action Plan, the Biden-Harris Administration has been committed to using every available tool to build more housing and lower costs. President Biden and Vice President Harris have put building more homes at the center of their economic agenda because rents are lower and homes are more affordable when we build more housing. After decades of under-investment in housing, we are finally seeing progress under President Biden and Vice President Harris: more units are under construction than at any time in over 50 years, and the rate of new housing starts is up 17 percent compared to the last Administration. The Biden-Harris Housing Plan would build over 2 million new homes to further increase supply and lower housing costs for Americans.

Building rental units and homes faster means lower costs for consumers: not only will more units get to the market faster, but increasing the speed of construction lowers building costs. The President and Vice President have been laser-focused on lowering housing costs for renters and homeowners alike.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing major new actions to build on that progress and further implement its Housing Supply Action Plan:

Making funding available to help communities break down barriers to housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is announcing the availability of $100 million through its landmark Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing) program, which provides grants to communities to identify and remove barriers to affordable housing production and preservation. Grantees may use awards to further develop, evaluate, and implement housing policy plans, improve housing strategies, and facilitate affordable housing production and preservation. In June, Vice President Harris announced the first-ever grantees of the program, which provided $85 million to more than 20 cities and states with funding to identify and overcome barriers to building more affordable housing.

Providing interest rate predictability to spur housing development. The Department of the Treasury and HUD are announcing a major improvement to the Federal Financing Bank (FFB) Multifamily Risk Sharing Program that would provide greater interest rate predictability for state and local housing finance agencies that finance housing projects through the FFB. This program already dramatically reduces costs for state and local housing finance agencies by allowing them to borrow funds at just above the rate at which the US government borrows. This new action will expand the reach of the Risk Sharing program, especially for new construction projects, by providing housing finance agencies with greater certainty about the interest rate that they will face after the construction period ends, making more housing developments financially viable. Treasury and HUD indefinitely extended the Risk Sharing Program earlier this year, after the previous Administration allowed it to lapse. The program has already supported more than 16,000 units since restarting in 2021 and is expected to help create or preserve tens-of-thousands of units over the next decade.

Streamlining requirements for transit-oriented development projects. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is announcing new guidance to streamline and clarify requirements for closing DOT loans for residential development near transit, including commercial-to-residential conversions. New guidance FAQs , issued by the Build America Bureau, clarify that Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) loans used for conversion projects may be eligible for a categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that would exempt applicable projects from more detailed environmental analysis and save time and money, as long as those projects do not expand the footprint of the building being converted or modify other facilities. The guidance further clarifies that TIFIA loans can be used to refinance existing debt as part of building conversion or expansion projects, and clarifies that TIFIA and RRIF loans can serve as permanent, take-out financing for construction loans consistent with statutory requirements, as long as federal requirements are met. When DOT first announced these loan programs could be used to finance housing near transit, the estimated time between final Letter of Interest and the loan close was up to 18 months. With these changes, that time can now be under a year as long as all other statutory requirements are met. The FAQs also feature additional information on federal requirements, borrower eligibility, market studies, and the Bureau’s underwriting process, including typical terms and conditions for TIFIA and RRIF loans. On August 27, the Bureau will host an introductory webinar on the credit review process for TOD loans. These efforts build on federal actions to make commercial to residential projects financially viable. Last fall, the White House released a Commercial to Residential Federal Resources Guidebook with over 20 federal programs across six federal agencies that can be used to support zero emissions climate-resilient conversions.

Accelerating historic preservation reviews for federal housing projects. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) proposed a new tool that would accelerate historic preservation reviews for millions of federally-funded, licensed, or owned housing units across the country. Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires that federal agencies take into account how any proposed actions will affect historic properties and seek ways to avoid, minimize, or mitigate any adverse effects as a result of the project. If finalized, the tool would exempt several activities, including interior repairs and most installation of rooftop solar panels, from further Section 106 review, and significantly reduce the review process for applicable projects, which would lower development costs and more efficiently deliver affordable, accessible, energy-efficient, and hazard-free housing to people who need it. In the same program comment, ACHP will also be accelerating historic preservation reviews for activities related to climate-friendly transportation and climate-smart buildings, creating accessible, climate-resilient, and connected communities.

Challenging communities to use Section 108 to build housing. HUD is launching a Legacy Challenge — encouraging communities that directly receive Community Development Block Grants to leverage low-cost, low interest loans for transformative housing investments. Up to $250 million in loan financing will be made available through the Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program for adaptive reuse, commercial-to-residential conversions, rehabilitation of existing housing, housing enabling infrastructure such as water and sewer line installation or upgrades, and revolving loan pools to support local development. For communities that express interest by November 1, 2024, HUD will offer additional flexibilities for these loans including certain repayment flexibilities and waivers to streamline program requirements. HUD will invite applicants to participate in a technical assistance cohort and provide tools to support application development.

Enabling more housing types to be built under the HUD Code. HUD anticipates finalizing a rule to update its Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards. Manufactured housing provides an essential path to increasing overall housing supply and offers significant savings over site-built housing. The HUD Code creates economies of scale for manufacturers, resulting in significantly lower costs for buyers. In addition to making changes that will increase the quality, energy efficiency, and resilience of manufactured homes, the new rule, if finalized, would enable duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to be built under the HUD Code for the first time, extending the cost-saving benefits of manufactured housing to denser urban and suburban infill contexts.

Expediting housing permitting. The Council of Economic Advisers analyzed the importance of state and local government actions to permit and approve new developments more quickly, including examples from HUD’s PRO Housing grants. Permitting requirements contribute to the nationwide housing shortage, leading many would-be deals to not be financially viable or be scaled down, and driving up the cost of housing. Reforms to streamline permitting processes can lead to more housing being built more quickly, which will lower housing costs.

Today’s actions build on dozens of executive actions taken by the Biden-Harris Administration to improve the federal programs to support the construction and preservation of affordable housing. As part of the Housing Supply Action Plan, the Administration simplified the process to use American Rescue Plan State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds for housing, facilitating nearly $20 billion committed for housing projects, including over $7.5 billion to construct, preserve, or stabilize tens of thousands of units; improved signature federal supply programs like the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and HOME Investment Partnerships program; made it easier to repurpose suitable federal land for affordable housing, while calling on state and local governments to do the same with land they own; launched a new effort to promote the conversion of underutilized commercial property into housing, including housing near transit; and made hundreds of billions of dollars available through the Inflation Reduction Act to cut energy costs and emissions in housing through energy efficiency, electrification, clean energy and climate resiliency.

See also:

INFLATION CAUSING GRIEF? HERE’S WHAT THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION IS DOING TO SAVE YOU MONEY ON EVERYDAY COSTS FROM HOUSING TO HEALTHCARE TO CHILDCARE, UTILITIES TO GROCERIES



Biden Administration, Housing

Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Actions to Lower Housing Costs and Boost Supply

Launches first-of-its-kind program to address land use and zoning barriers that limit housing

President Biden’s economic vision is about building an economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down— that’s Bidenomics. A critical foundation of that vision is an economy where everyone has access to a safe and affordable home. That vision means lowering costs, including by building and preserving more housing, particularly for lower- and middle-income households. The Administration is taking action to lower housing costs by tackling challenges that have stifled affordable housing for decades, as well as seizing immediate opportunities © Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

President Biden’s economic vision is about building an economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down— that’s Bidenomics. A critical foundation of that vision, and the central goal of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Housing Supply Action Plan, is an economy where everyone has access to a safe and affordable home. That vision means lowering costs, including by building and preserving more housing, particularly for lower- and middle-income households. Today’s announcements will lower housing costs by tackling challenges that have stifled affordable housing for decades, as well as seizing immediate opportunities:

  • Reducing barriers to build housing like restrictive and costly land use and zoning rules;
     
  • Expanding financing for affordable, energy efficient and resilient housing; and
     
  • Promoting commercial-to-residential conversion opportunities, particularly for affordable and zero emissions housing.

Recent data show that inflation in rental markets is decelerating and more apartments are on track to be built this year than any year on record. The Administration’s actions are directly leading to the creation of tens of thousands of affordable housing units. For example, jurisdictions participating in the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) HOME program will produce at least 20,000 units of affordable housing and support an additional 23,000 households with rental assistance, non-congregate shelter, or supportive services. Treasury recently announced that communities across the country will use ARP State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund funds for 2,500 separate projects and developments to meet housing needs and combat homelessness. And since the Administration’s restart of the Federal Financing Bank’s Risk Sharing program, almost 12,000 rental homes have been created or preserved.
 
Today’s actions further build on the Biden-Harris Administration’s Housing Supply Action Plan and updates announced last fall, and are a down payment on the historic housing investments proposed in the President’s Budget that would boost supply, lower costs and cut dangerous climate pollution, promote homeownership, protect renters, and promote fair housing. They also complement the actions by the Biden-Harris Administration in just the last week, including a crackdown on junk fees in the rental housing market, and new steps announced today that build on its Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights.
 
Reducing Barriers to Build Housing Like Restrictive and Costly Land Use and Zoning Rules
 
Local land use laws and zoning regulations limit where, and how densely, housing can be built. This constrains housing supply, perpetuates historical patterns of segregation, prevents workers from accessing jobs, and increases energy costs and climate risk. Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new actions to fund jurisdictions committed to removing barriers that restrict housing production and preservation, including by:
 
Announcing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing) program. Restrictive local land use rules slow down housing production, or prohibit housing being developed at all, which increases the costs to rent or purchase a home. Such restrictive rules are often also inconsistent with fair housing principles. This first-of-its-kind $85 million federal program will provide communities with funding to identify and remove barriers to affordable housing production and preservation. HUD will award grants of up to $10 million to jurisdictions that have an acute demand for affordable housing and are working to identify, address, or remove barriers to housing production and preservation. Funding can be used for planning and policy activities to allow for higher-density zoning and rezoning for multifamily and mixed-use housing, streamlining affordable housing development, and reducing requirements related to parking and other land use restrictions. Funding can also be used for infrastructure activities necessary for the development or preservation of housing.
 
Reducing land-use restrictions and improving transportation access to housing. Earlier this month, the Department of Transportation announced its Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods (RCN) program, which will provide up to $3.16 billion for planning and capital construction projects that prioritize disadvantaged communities and improve access to daily destinations. This includes improving connections to affordable housing, fostering equitable development, and increasing housing supply through zoning reform. RCN includes a $450 million Regional Partnership Challenge that will incentivize stronger regional partnerships to tackle persistent equitable access and mobility challenges, with land use reform as a key priority.
 
Encouraging the improvement of land use in Economic Development Administration grant programs. The Economic Development Administration (EDA) updated its “Investment Priorities” that guide the agency’s grantmaking to include an emphasis on efficient land use, where commercial uses, economic activity, and employment opportunities are concentrated and accessible to nearby residential density. Moving forward, EDA will more explicitly incentivize projects that include an emphasis on density in the vicinity of the project – which can in turn encourage greater housing supply and allow people to live closer to work and services they need.
 
Expanding Financing to Create and Repair Affordable, Energy Efficient and Climate Resilient Housing
 
Gaps in access to financing, along with the complexity of mixing funding sources, limit the production or preservation of affordable housing. The Biden-Harris Administration is taking the following actions to expand financing for affordable, energy efficient, and climate resilient housing going forward:
 
Providing new financing for affordable, energy efficient, climate resilient housing and clean energy investments. This month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which will mobilize private capital and provide financing for thousands of clean energy projects, including cost-saving retrofits of existing homes and buildings, construction of zero emissions buildings, and commercial to residential conversions, among others. Such investments will reduce pollution and lower utility costs. This announcement follows HUD’s announcement of its Green and Resilient Retrofit Program with over $830 million available in grants and loan subsidy, for loan commitments up to $4 billion, to modernize existing HUD-assisted affordable homes so they remain available for families into the future. The Department of Energy also released $90 million to advances efficiency and resilience through building codes, and HUD, FHA, and the United States Department of Agriculture proposed modernizing energy codes.
 
Making it easier to build and rehabilitate apartments with FHA-insured mortgages. HUD announced new guidelines that increase the dollar amount threshold at which a multifamily loan is considered a large loan and is subject to additional underwriting requirements from $75 million to $120 million. This change will simplify underwriting and reduce development costs for large multifamily properties financed with FHA-insured mortgages without presenting undue risk to FHA, significantly expanding commitments for affordable housing financing. HUD will review this large loan limit annually.
 
Streamlining financing for the creation of affordable housing. HUD announced that it will allow larger loans to participate in the agency’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Pilot Program, which increases the number of apartment sites eligible for a program that streamlines financing. HUD also updated guidelines to allow public housing authorities (PHAs) to more easily use housing vouchers and mixed-finance transactions to create or preserve housing.
 
Repairing and expanding affordable housing. HUD published new guidance for public housing authorities and multifamily housing owners participating in the Rental Assistance Demonstration, providing them with additional tools to repair and build deeply affordable housing. The guidance also promotes water- and energy-efficiency investments, and includes new requirements that address climate resilience, adopts stronger energy efficiency standards, and supports repairs to thousands of existing affordable units in the next three years.
 
Empowering homeowners to be part of the solution by increasing financing for onsite housing units. In April, FHA proposed updates that, if implemented, would make it easier to finance accessory dwelling units (ADUs), which are additional onsite housing units. Among the changes is the ability to include projected rental income from an ADU as part of the qualifying income when purchasing or refinancing a home. This added flexibility would expand opportunities for low- and moderate-income homeowners to benefit from the wealth-building potential of ADUs while increasing the stock of affordable housing.
 
Promoting Commercial-to-Residential Conversions
 
Across the country, commercial vacancies are affecting urban and regional economies. Commercial-to-residential conversion can counteract those effects, reenergize local economies, and add to the supply of housing. The adaptive reuse of these properties also presents an opportunity to create zero-emissions housing, which will reduce energy costs for residents and cut dangerous climate pollution. Recognizing that opportunity, the Biden-Harris Administration is launching a new commercial-to-residential conversion initiative that is:
 
Leveraging federal funding and other tools to support conversions. The White House will lead a new interagency working group to develop and advance federal funding opportunities that support the conversion of commercial properties to housing, and leverage climate-focused federal resources to create zero emissions and affordable units. For example, programs like HUD’s PRO Housing announced today, as well as investments from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, can be used for such conversions. As part of this initiative, the General Services Administration (GSA) will launch an effort to identify and market surplus federal properties that represent the best opportunities for commercial-to-residential conversions. Ongoing conversion projects from GSA dispositions are already producing over 1,000 new housing units. The initiative will continue to convene developers, municipalities, and other stakeholders to learn about opportunities and challenges.
 
Funding research that supports commercial to residential conversions. This week, HUD announced new funding to support research on office-to-residential conversions, including producing a new guide for state and local policymakers on how to make these projects more economically viable. Building on a public convening held this week on office-to-residential conversions, HUD will release a policy brief on this topic later this year.