THE NAHB HAS FORMED AN AMBITIOUS PARTNERSHIP with mortgage finance company Fannie Mae to deliver workforce housing to some 1,000 communities nationwide.
Tops on the list is a $10 billion investment by Fannie Mae through the end of this decade to finance workforce housing in underserved low- and moderate-income areas. Fannie Mae estimates the investment will help develop more than 325,000 single-family and multifamily units.
Fannie Mae also pledged to expand its multifamily housing financing to $200 billion by 2009 and said it would fund three initial programs to develop housing for the chronically homeless: $25 million for low-cost predevelopment financing, and $5 million each to the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
In addition, the plan calls for Fannie Mae and the NAHB to name a metropolitan area that will serve as a laboratory for addressing workforce housing issues. At a press conference in Washington last March, NAHB president Bobby Rayburn said the lab community will be named by June 30.
Here are some of the reasons workforce housing has become a hot-button issue:
