House Panel Approves Affordable Housing Trust Fund

WASHINGTON – The House Financial Services Committee yesterday approved a bill creating a National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which would provide as much as $1 billion a year to help build affordable homes. But the Fund, which would provide new opportunities for credit unions to finance such projects, has a long way to go because its main source of funding would be the affordable housing funds that would be collected from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the long-stalled secondary market reform bill. The aim of the trust fund is to construct as many as 1.5 million affordable housing units over the next 10 years, without any federal expenditures. The available funds would dwarf the $260 million in affordable housing funds provided last year by the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks to banks and credit unions. The bill nows goes to the full House for a vote.