Priority Focus Areas

Foreclosure Prevention and Neighborhood Stabilization

NHC and the Center have been leaders in examining and responding to the current mortgage crisis to help prevent foreclosures and stabilize affected families and communities. In partnership with NeighborWorks America and Enterprise Community Partners, NHC chaired a task force of national organizations that successfully advocated for $3.9 billion in federal funding for post-foreclosure neighborhood stabilization efforts. The Center has disseminated information on successful and promising policies to prevent foreclosures through HousingPolicy.org – the Center’s online guide to state and local housing solutions. Our team is currently developing new trainings on these topics, as well as working on the development of Foreclosure-Response.org, a new Web portal that will provide access to data, analysis and best practices on foreclosure prevention and neighborhood stabilization.


Reform of the Secondary Markets and Response to the Financial Crisis

NHC is concerned about the mission and function of the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) – including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks – following the recent expansion of the federal government’s role in the secondary mortgage market. Affordable housing was already woefully underserved prior to the collapse of the housing market and subsequent government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now there are even greater near-term uncertainties surrounding the continued availability of financing for affordable housing. The increased influence of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and intervention in the market by various federal agencies also needs to be examined.  NHC is convening a task force of leading experts to discuss the role of the GSEs, FHA and other government entities that are central to financing affordable housing in communities nationwide. The goal of this task force is to identify the impacts of the current crisis on the financing of single- and multifamily affordable housing and to develop related recommendations.


Intersection of Housing, Transportation and Energy

NHC and the Center believe that the long-term trend of rising energy prices will have profound impacts on how and where we build housing. If these changes are implemented effectively and equitably, they could have widespread benefits, helping the environment while lowering housing, utility and transportation costs for strapped families. However, this outcome will not occur on its own. A concerted effort by government and practitioners is needed to ensure that affordable housing is preserved and expanded near public transit and job centers and that financing is available to help lower-income families make their homes more energy-efficient. Policies that encourage the creation of mixed-income communities near work, schools and retail will enable more families to live in communities they otherwise might not be able to afford while also increasing public transportation ridership, conserving energy and reducing transportation costs.

To advance this agenda, NHC is an active member of the executive committee for Transportation for America – a coalition of organizations working to influence the reauthorization of federal transportation programs to more effectively advance national priorities related to housing, public transit, the environment and energy security. The Center has an active research agenda focused on developing a better understanding of the combined burdens of housing and transportation costs and appropriate policy solutions, which includes its Heavy Load publication. Both NHC and the Center are working in partnership with other organizations to help improve the energy-efficiency of existing and new homes.


Intersection of Housing, Health, Education and Economic Prosperity

NHC and the Center have long understood that housing represents a critical platform for ensuring a brighter future for America’s children and their families. To clarify these connections, the Center and Enterprise Community Partners took the first-ever comprehensive look at research on the Vital Links between housing, health and education. The in-depth analyses reveal the many ways in which stable, quality and affordable homes – both rental and homeownership – contribute to the achievement of key health and education outcomes. The Center is focused on developing additional research and analyses to further document how housing can help advance societal goals, including economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. NHC is committed to fostering the partnerships necessary to build related consensus, as well as to ensuring that the Center’s research informs housing policy at the local, state and national levels.


Rental Preservation

NHC and the Center are committed to helping preserve and maintain the nation’s supply of affordable rental housing. Around the country, hundreds of thousands of subsidized rental units are at-risk of loss due to the expiration of required affordability periods or physical deterioration. Preserving the affordability of rental housing that is privately-owned and unsubsidized is also essential. To call attention to these challenges and their solutions, NHC will be hosting a series of regional forums on rental housing preservation, as well as an institute on the topic at the Solutions for Working Families: 2009 Learning Conference on State and Local Housing Policy in June 2009, which will bring together 500 state and local leaders from around the nation in Chicago to share information on effective housing strategies. The Center is also synthesizing learning on this topic from research funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.


Housing America’s Workforce

NHC and the Center understand that the challenges of finding affordable housing are no longer limited to low-income families. Many moderate-income workers also cannot afford to live near their workplace. The Center has a long history of research reports documenting the housing challenges faced by working families, including the Housing Landscape series and Paycheck to Paycheck, an online, interactive database that compares the incomes of working families in more than 60 professions with the costs of buying or renting a home in nearly 200 markets around the country. With the launch of HousingPolicy.org, NHC and the Center have taken the lead in providing accessible information on proven and promising strategies that states and localities are using to expand the availability of homes affordable to working families. What we learn from this initiative will help inform the Solutions for Working Families: 2009 Learning Conference.

NHC has an active advocacy agenda focused on supporting a federal tax credit to encourage employers to provide housing benefits for their workers, as well as other policies that would help expand the availability of housing for working families. The Center also recently conducted a related case study entitled Quantifying the Value Proposition of Employer-Assisted Housing. NHC is interested in expanding its advocacy efforts to increase support for the development of workforce housing, including urban infill, mixed-income and multifamily housing, and transit-oriented development.

Homeownership, Asset Building and Shared Equity

NHC and the Center are focused on rebuilding the ladder to sustainable homeownership for working families after the collapse of the housing finance system and the foreclosure crisis. There is a growing consensus among researchers and policymakers that the accumulation of financial assets is essential to the future well-being and success of America’s families. Traditionally, homeownership has been one of the most important vehicles for asset development, but the foreclosure crisis raises profound questions about the sustainability of homeownership for low- and moderate-income families. Our asset-building work has several focus areas: helping families and communities to preserve existing assets through foreclosure prevention and neighborhood stabilization; helping to create a more balanced housing market by taking shared equity homeownership (an intermediate form of tenure between rental housing and homeownership) to scale; reducing utility and transportation costs so families have more discretionary income to invest; and working to help families in subsidized rental housing build assets through the Family Self-Sufficiency and Moving to Work programs.

In addition to our ongoing work summarized above on foreclosure prevention, neighborhood stabilization, and energy/transportation issues, NHC and the Center are helping to lead an effort to educate policy makers and influence legislation focused on the implementation of shared equity homeownership with a goal of increasing sustainable homeownership and asset building opportunities for working families nationwide. The Center developed a suite of materials on the topic entitled Shared Equity, Powerful Results.


Elevating and Maintaining Affordable Housing as a First-Tier National Priority

NHC is focused on expanding communications outreach to elevate and maintain affordable housing as a first-tier national priority. With the notable exception of the current foreclosure crisis and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, housing has not been the focus of sustained attention. The housing field needs a unified, central point for education, outreach and communications focused on affordable housing. This central body could achieve economies of scale that individual organizations cannot, fund the development of research to test the effectiveness of new and existing messages and materials, and improve the general consistency of message among groups around the country. NHC’s role as the United Voice for Housing makes it well-positioned to expand its existing communications function to become the central point for communications education and outreach within the housing industry.