Affordable Housing

This week, the U.S. Census Bureau reported a decrease in the national poverty rate to 13.5 percent of the population with 3.5 million fewer people living below the poverty line in 2014.

Average incomes rose to $56,516 a 5.2% inflation-adjusted increase over 2014.

Some good news for a change!

Click here to view the complete article.

Check out these challenging thoughts from Self Help Credit Union founder and CEO, Martin Eakes describing his thoughts on why homeownership loans to low income families are good risks. I would concur with Martin with Habitat's experience making mortgage loans to low-income families since 1976.

It’s been well documented over the years that homeownership has been the main driver of building individual wealth in the United States, especially among those in lower income ranges.

The nation’s housing recovery has been underway since 2012 and housing prices have recovered to near pre-recession peaks.  Despite this rebound, home ownership rates have continued to drop and are currently at a 51 year low.

Several presidential election cycles ago, Habitat for Humanity began hosting builds at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions to give volunteers, sponsors and members of Congress the opportunity to meet the need for safe, healthy and affordable housing by supporting a Habitat project in convention host cities.

The housing industry is blessed with a very robust research and analysis organization called the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.  Annually, they release a very extensive data-filled report called State of the Nation’s Housing.

Here is a link to the report: http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/state_nations_housing

And here is a quick summary of the findings from Habitat for Humanity’s Government Relations and Advocacy Office:

The Raleigh City Council approved its Fiscal Year 2017 budget yesterday that includes an unprecedented $5.7 million for the production of an additional 125 units of affordable housing.  Many thanks to Raleigh City Council for taking leadership on the critical issue of affordable housing.  Here is an article from today’s News & Observer:

 http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/raleigh-report-blog/article84893397.html

Raleigh City Manager Ruffin Hall recently took a bold and much needed step to allocate $5.7 million dollars in the City’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget to support the production of an additional 125 units of affordable housing.  We applaud the Manager for taking this action to support City Council’s stated strategic priority to expand affordable housing production.

I was recently listening to some music from one of my favorite bands, an Irish group called Rend Collective.  Here is the lyric that caught my attention:

Increase in us we pray

Unveil why we’re made

We’ve had more than 2,000 families complete a pre-application to buy a home through Habitat Wake in the past two years.  Only about 10% of those families will eventually be approved for homeownership through Habitat and the biggest culprit in preventing approval is a poor credit history.

Predatory lending products are a big part of that debt trap that many families find themselves in and that trap prevents families from taking advantage of the wealth-building that homeownership provides.