Increasing the supply and preservation of affordable homes
Check out our interactive map to see areas where local and state Habitat organizations have successfully changed housing policies to increase the supply and preservation of affordable homes.
To address home affordability challenges faced by low-income renters and homeowners, Cost of Home used various strategies.
Strategies to successfully increase the supply and preservation of affordable homes:
- Creating new dedicated funding for local and state housing trust funds.
- Increasing general fund appropriations for housing.
- Adopting multiyear, general-obligation housing bonds.
- Establishing and expanding state housing tax credits.
- Creating new resources to support homes for those with the lowest incomes.
- Expanding the availability of housing vouchers to make more existing homes affordable.
As low-income families and essential workers continue to be squeezed out of the rental and homeownership housing market, federal programs to increase the supply of affordable homes do help but have not kept pace with local needs.
That’s why the Cost of Home campaign places increasing the supply and preservation of affordable homes among its key areas of focus.
To supplement static or declining federal housing resources, local and state Habitat organizations are engaging in advocacy initiatives to persuade their governments to raise new housing resources of their own.
Challenges for homeownership
- According to Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, the lingering national scarcity of both existing and new single-family affordable homes that low-income families can afford is driving up prices.
- Federal housing programs, like the ones listed below, do help but remain inadequate:
- HUD’s Home Investment Partnerships Program funds the construction, repair or rehab of affordable owner-occupied or rental housing.
- Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program helps nonprofits acquire land or foreclosed properties to develop affordable homes for first-time, lower-income homeowners.
- Housing Choice Voucher program provides rental assistance to low-income households to help them afford decent and safe homes on the open market.
“While we need federal funding, which we clearly do, the truth of the matter is that leadership has to come at the local level.”
Challenges for renters
- The number of low-income renters outnumber the supply of affordable units – a gap that has been widening for decades.
- The U.S. needs an additional 7.3 million rentals that people with extremely low-income can afford, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. These renters face shortage in every state and major metropolitan area.
- Renter cost burdens have reached record levels, leaving many to choose between paying rent or paying for necessities such as food and medicine.
“On the rental side, there isn’t a single metropolitan area in America today where a family earning minimum wage can afford the fair market rent on a two-bedroom apartment.”
Our impact
With still one more year of the campaign to go, check out our solutions in action:
- Policy successes mapped by policy focus area and geographies.
- A typology or searchable database of policy changes achieved by Cost of Home.
- Urban Institute brief on searchable database.
- Strategies for advocates to influence home affordability policies.
- Urban Institute policy assessment report.
Join us
Add your voice as Habitat advocates for policies that will increase the production, preservation and accessibility of homes that are affordable for the families who need them most.
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Since credit is difficult, if not impossible, for many households to access, we’re focusing on these promising strategies for equitably increasing access to credit for underserved populations.
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Zoning restrictions and high land prices can make it prohibitively difficult to build or preserve affordable homes in opportunity-connected communities.
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At Habitat for Humanity, we know that home isn’t just a building; it includes the community and resources in which you live, work and grow.
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Discover the ongoing impact the Cost of Home campaign on improving home affordability: explore policy successes supported by local and state Habitat organizations, strategies for advocacy practitioners to effect policy change and a policy assessment report by the Urban Institute.
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Achieving policy solutions in the four areas laid out by our platform will enable families to have greater access to homes they can afford — and to all the opportunities that follow.
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Check out our interactive maps to see policy changes in your area and explore our successes by policy focus area and by location.