Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will soon be reintroducing the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, their bipartisan legislation to expand and strengthen the Housing Credit.
The new legislation will be very similar to the comprehensive version of the legislation introduced in the last Congress, S. 3237, with several minor modifications. This legislation would increase Housing Credit authority by 50 percent, taking a meaningful step towards addressing our nation’s vast and growing affordable housing needs. It would also strengthen the Housing Credit by providing states with additional flexibility, making the financing of affordable housing more predictable and streamlined, facilitating Housing Credit development in challenging markets like rural and Native American communities, increasing the Housing Credit’s ability to serve extremely low-income tenants, and supporting the preservation of existing affordable housing. The legislation also contains important provisions that would support development of rental homes using the Housing Credit coupled with multifamily Housing Bonds, which currently provide critical financing to roughly 40 percent of Housing Credit apartments.
The ACTION Campaign will be submitting a letter to Congress demonstrating our strong support for the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act. Read the letter and sign on. The deadline for signing on to the letter is Wednesday, March 1.
All existing ACTION Campaign members will be included in the letter, so if you are already an ACTION Campaign member you do NOT need to sign on. However, we encourage you to share the letter with your networks to help us show broad support for the Housing Credit.
We are specifically looking for additional signatories in the following states:
- Alaska
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Mississippi
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Utah
- Wyoming
If you have any questions or wish to remove your organization from the letter, contact Emily Cadik at ecadik before the March 1 deadline.
Visit www.rentalhousingaction.org for more information about our efforts to expand, strengthen and protect the Housing Credit.
Oklahoma Coalition for Affordable Housing 