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:
Between 1997 and 2001, the number of lower-middle and middle-income households spending more than half their income on housing surged by more than 700,000, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.The National Housing Conference reports that average salaries for elementary school teachers ($41,080), police officers ($40,970), and licensed practical nurses ($30,670) are too low for them to qualify for a mortgage on a $156,000 home.Retail salespersons could not qualify to purchase a median-priced home in any of the 60 metropolitan markets studied by the National Housing Conference. Elementary school teachers could not qualify in 32 markets; police officers, in 28 markets; and licensed practical nurses, in 57 markets.Based on HUD's fair market rents, households with one full-time, minimum-wage earner cannot afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.