White House

As Congress returns from its August recess, lawmakers must act to secure funding for fiscal year (FY) 2020 ahead of the September 30 deadline. The White House released a list of requested anomalies, or changes to the current funding levels and legislative language, if lawmakers rely on a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government past Sept. 30. HUD’s Section 202 Housing for the Elderly secured a coveted spot on that list.

The National Housing Conference (NHC) released a new white paper on housing finance reform that calls for bipartisan cooperation between Congress and the Trump administration to complete housing finance reform leading to the release of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from conservatorship. he paper establishes seven conditions to guide administrative and statutory reform to ensure that the U.S. will have a well-functioning housing finance system that provides consistent, affordable credit to borrowers across the nation and through all parts of the credit cycle, while minimizing the risk of another taxpayer-funded bailout.

In a new paper, Michael Stegman with the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studiers (JCHS) argues that “eliminating exclusionary land use regulations should be the civil rights issue of our time.” Stegman looks back at five presidential commissions and federal initiatives to eliminate local barriers to housing development, put in motion by both Democratic and Republican administrations, arguing that each was based on the proposition that unnecessary land use regulations drive up production costs and drive down housing supply.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to President Donald Trump on recommendations to end homelessness after the president said the following on homelessness in an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “It’s disgraceful. I’m going to maybe and I’m looking at it very seriously.”

Last week, the House passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 on a 284-149 vote and the Senate is expected to vote on—and pass—a two-year budget deal today. The deal now centers on questions of whether President Donald Trump will sign it; acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney recently said the president will sign it.

Congressional leaders and President Trump have finished negotiating a $1.3 trillion two-year budget deal. If passed by Congress and signed by the President, the deal would eliminate the spending caps for the final two years of sequestration imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, suspend the federal debt ceiling until July 31, 2021, and boost federal spending by $320 billion over two years with $77 billion in offsets.

On June 25, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the White House Council on Eliminating Barriers to Affordable Housing and named HUD Secretary Ben Carson as its Chairperson.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a notice soliciting comments on changes to the Official Poverty Measure (OPM). The OPM is currently set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture based on the cost of food and subject to cost-of-living adjustments. This measure is used by the Department of Health and Human […]

This American Banker article explores the remarks from President Trump at the recent National Association of Realtors event. “This is a pretty urgent problem.  We’re doing well with it now… We have many geniuses looking at it and we’ll figure something out.”

At the Mortgage Bankers Association conference, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Dr. Mark Calabria said “ while I’m committed to working with Congress, I’m not going to wait on Congress.”

The Opportunity Starts at Home campaign released the results of a national public opinion poll showing that the vast majority of the public (85 percent) believes that ensuring everyone has a safe, decent and affordable place to live should be a “top national priority.”

President Trump signed a memorandum that directs HUD and Treasury to draft administrative and legislative options for housing finance reform to be submitted to the President for approval as soon as practicable. HUD will prepare a reform plan for the housing finance agencies it oversees, and Treasury will prepare a reform plan for Fannie Mae […]

President Trump released his proposed FY 2020 ‘skinny’ budget, “A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First.” Overall, the budget proposes to cut HUD by $9.6 billion or 18% below 2019 enacted levels. These cuts are similar in magnitude to the proposed cuts in the President’s FY-2019 budget request.