Senate Amendment 570 eviscerates affordable housing
HOME Funds rescue tax credits
Senate Amendment 570, is the substitute to the HR 1, the House approved economic recovery legislation. The amendment eliminated or reduced thousands of programs. We searched the 778 page document and found very little left.
Where did it go? As Paul Krugman in The New York Times said in his column today; “the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the ‘flip your house to your brother’ provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.”
To read Mr. Krugman’s analysis click here.
We are puzzled. Was it not speculation and the flipping of real estate that got us into this financial morass?
To read the full text of Senate Amendment 570 click here.
To view a side by side comparison of the bills click here.
The full Senate will vote on the bill on Tuesday February 10, 2009.
$1,500,000,000 for homelessness prevention activities,
$2,000,000,000 for the low income housing tax credit program. These funds would be allocated to States under the HOME programs for State housing finance agencies (including for purposes throughout this heading any entity that is responsible for distributing low-income housing tax credits) or as appropriate as an entity as a gap financer, to distribute these funds competitively under this heading to housing developers for projects eligible for funding (such terms including those who may have received funding) under the low income housing tax credit program.
$250,000,000 HOME Investment Partnerships Program to remain available until September 30, 2011 .
$5,000,000,000 for Public Housing Capital Fund with $3,000,000,000 though formula and $2,000,000,000 in targeted grants.
$118,000,000 shall be for grants or loans for energy retrofit and green investments in such assisted housing, i.e. Section 201, Section 811 and Section 8;
$2,132,000,000 shall be for an additional amount for paragraph (1) under the heading “Project-Based Rental Assistance”.
