Congressional findings

The Congress finds that— (1) the cost of housing for all Americans has increased dramatically and wages have not kept pace with these increases over the last 50 years; (2) the Housing Trust Fund (HTF) provides a dedicated, permanent source of funding for affordable housing; (3) the HTF is an important source of financing for State housing finance agencies, used along with tax credits and the HOME Investment Partnership program (HOME); (4) the Capital Magnet Fund (CMF) provides funding to nonprofits and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to expand financing for the development, rehabilitation, and purchase of affordable housing and other related economic development projects in distressed communities; (5) the HTF and CMF are funded through contributions from the Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; (6) the HOME program is used, in combination with housing tax credits, by state housing finance agencies to build affordable rental housing; (7) the HOME program is also the primary Federal resource for the construction of affordable family homes; (8) despite its importance and effectiveness, the HOME program has not been adequately funded in relation to increasing costs associated with single family and multifamily housing construction; (9) restrictive land use regulations disproportionately affect low- and moderate-income families by limiting the availability of quality affordable housing and driving up the costs of existing housing; (10) public housing agencies are unnecessarily prohibited from increasing their number of public housing units above the total they had in 1992 under a provision of law commonly referred to as the Faircloth limit; (11) community land trusts or shared equity housing programs are crucial for ensuring perpetual housing affordability; (12) community land trusts or related shared equity housing programs have established legal frameworks to keep homes affordable for more than 30 years; (13) there are over 300 community land trust entities in the United States encompassing 43,931 housing units; (14) rental housing subsidized by the Rural Housing Service (RHS) of the Department of Agriculture is often the only affordable option in rural communities; (15) more than half of extremely low-income rural renters experience housing insecurity; (16) state and local housing finance agencies are innovating new ways to finance and cross-subsidize the creation of affordable mixed income public housing without depending on the use of scarce low-income housing tax credits; (17) low-cost debt is one of the primary ways countries around the world subsidize housing affordable housing development; and (18) state and local housing finance agencies in the United States have reported strong support for access to low cost Federal financing.