For Immediate Release: Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014
Contact: Donna De La Cruz, [email protected] (202) 339-9331

Center for Community Change Praises National Low Income Housing Coalition for Work Benefiting the National Housing Trust Fund

(WASHINGTON)–Community Change congratulates the National Low Income Housing Coalition, its members, and partner organizations for the perseverance and unwavering advocacy resulting in the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) directing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin setting aside and allocating funds to the National Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund pursuant to the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA). HERA authorized FHFA to temporarily suspend these allocations, and FHFA informed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of a temporary suspension on November 13, 2008.

The Housing Trust Fund Project of the Center for Community Change has been a central partner in the campaign to establish the National Housing Trust Fund, including participating in the campaign steering committee, since its inception. Reflecting on the decades it has taken to reach this extraordinary moment, Mary Brooks of the Housing Trust Fund Project notes that it is a remarkable achievement for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, state partners nationwide, and affordable housing/homeless advocates who never gave up on reaching this moment.

“We know from the success of local and state housing trust funds across the country, that implementing a National Housing Trust Fund has the potential, long over-due, for this country to make important strides in ensuring that everyone has a safe affordable place to call home,” Brooks said.

The National Housing Trust Fund will provide resources to make housing affordable to people at the lowest incomes: working people depending on low wage jobs, seniors and people with disabilities on fixed incomes, and others currently priced out of the communities they call home. The National Housing Trust Fund, which will be administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is the first new Federal housing program to address the needs of people with extremely low incomes in more than four decades.

“As recent reports indicate, we face unparalleled family homelessness in the United States. The National Housing Trust Fund will be an essential tool to opening the doors of housing opportunity to closed too many,” said Michael Anderson, director of the Housing Trust Fund Project.

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