Category: Housing News

Many of our readers have commented on the Trump Administration’s affordable housing cuts proposed for FY 2019. A common comment is that Section 8 and other programs are cut to save billions, but the minimum wage is not being raised. It’s been the same for years but rents keep going up. What is the minimum…

Update: The Senate passed the budget resolution after 1:00 a.m. Friday morning, 71-28. The vote was delayed because of objections by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to the amount it would add to the deficit. The House passed the measure early Friday morning on a vote of 240-186. There were 73 Democrats who voted for the budget…

Today, the U.S. Senate reached agreement on a two-year budget deal that could have brought more funding to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. However, Affordable Housing Online has confirmed with the office of Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) that the agreement was passed without additional funding to the LIHTC program. Senators Cantwell and…

For his first State of the Union address, President Trump gave the third longest speech in the past 50 years. With all that to say, he did not once touch on the affordable housing crisis in America. He did, however, say things that foreshadow the future of affordable housing and the prospects for low-income renters.…

  The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a delay this month in implementing a 2015 fair housing rule designed to reduce residential segregation. The rule requires local governments receiving HUD community development funds to submit an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) report. This assessment documents where segregation is occurring in the…

The federal government shutdown over the weekend caused many US federal offices to be closed today. However, the shutdown did not affect most participants the housing programs offered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). At the local level, Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) should have been open and doing business as usual.…

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reversed course this month on a proposal to shift funding targeted to house homeless veterans to be used by local VA hospitals for general service use, after facing opposition. The program, called Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH), combines rental assistance provided by HUD Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers (HCV)…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released the 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress last week, showing that homelessness increased nationwide by almost 1% overall since 2016. Despite the HUD press release saying that “Homelessness Declines in Most Communities with Increases Reported in High-Cost Areas,” this is the first increase in…

In our continuing effort to protect our users by exposing online housing scams, our team posted an alert about an identity theft scam last week that went above and beyond to target persons looking for low income housing. The scam website pictured above stole Affordable Housing Online’s logo in an attempt to make it appear…