Administration Releases Housing Supply Plan

The White House is releasing a comprehensive Housing Supply Action Plan designed to ease the burden of housing costs by boosting the supply of housing in every community. NAR has been sounding the alarm for several years about the housing supply and affordability crisis and is pleased to see the Administration propose action to address these challenges.

Under the Plan, Congress and the Administration will:

• Provide incentives for communities to reform their zoning and land use policies to make them more housing and development friendly.
• Deploy new financing mechanisms at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD to build and preserve more housing where financing gaps exist, such as manufactured housing, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), 2-4 unit properties, and smaller multifamily buildings.
• Expand and improve existing forms of federal financing, including exploring with Fannie Mae the possibility of placing multi-family Construction to Permanent loans in wider use; promoting the use of state, local, and Tribal government COVID-19 recovery funds to expand affordable housing supply; and reforming the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME).
• Enacting the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act to build and rehabilitate 125,000 homes for low- and middle-income homebuyers.
• Ensure that more of the government-owned supply of homes goes to owners who will live in them or non-profits who will rehab them – not large institutional investors.
• Work with the private sector to address supply chain challenges, labor shortages and improve building techniques to finish construction in 2022 on the most homes in any year since 2006.

While NAR applauds the release of this comprehensive plan, NAR also encourages the White House and Congress to consider stronger measures to create additional residential units, including tax incentives to convert unused or underutilized commercial property to affordable housing or condominiums and also tax incentives to increase the supply of construction workers.

President Biden Announces New Actions to Ease the Burden of Housing Costs (The White House, May 16, 2022)