It has been several weeks since our last Housing Update so there is a lot of information to cover in this issue - in fact there so much to report on the legislative front that we will be doing a Legislative Update next week. 

The 2008 Session of the NC General Assembly will end today. Overall, it was a very good session for housing issues and we are proud of what we helped to accomplish. As always, as a Coalition we work with our members, member groups, and partner organizations to try and bring needed policy and funding improvements on housing issues. We do not accomplish anything alone as Housing Coalition staff.

Legislative Summary

A final budget agreement for the 2008-2009 fiscal year was achieved last week. The biggest change in housing funding was for Housing Counseling, where the Office of the Commissioner of Banks agreed to spend $600,000 on Housing Counseling and $400,000 on other foreclosure efforts to support folks facing the loss of their home. 

As noted previously, NC Housing Trust Fund was increased by $2M recurring and $7M nonrecurring for the Housing 400 program (provides development funding for accessible units affordable to people at SSI income levels) for a total of $17M. This is more funding than the Trust Fund received last year and takes the recurring portion to $10M which is a great victory in a tight budget year. While this is still not where we want to be with the Trust Fund, it does represent a tremendous amount of work by many organizations who visited with legislative leaders with us throughout the first months of the session. Thanks to AARP-NC, ARC-NC, United Way of NC, NC Justice Center, NC Bankers Association, NC Community Development Initiative, NC Realtors, NCHFA and NC Homebuilders for making those visits on behalf of the Trust Fund.

The Home Protection Pilot Program received $3M recurring, which brings stability to the program and takes it statewide for the first time. This program provides both housing counseling funding for agencies and mortgage assistance for those facing foreclosure due to job loss in our state. It has been a successful program under NCHFA’s leadership, and special thanks go to Sen. Walter Dalton for his support of this program and its expanded funding.

The budget also funds $200,000 in additional support for Legal Aid offices to handle increased foreclosure caseloads. This is far less than is needed and is the biggest unmet need in the foreclosure crisis.

We had two important victories in policymaking in addition to funding issues to tell you about (with much more to come next week):
 
HB 1700 provides a tax credit to owners of manufactured home communities if they sell the park to a resident-owned cooperative or a nonprofit land community who will preserve the park as an affordable community. This bill passed the House and was rolled into the budget on the Senate side. Thanks to Rep. Susan Fisher for her leadership along with Rep. Weiss on the House side and to Sen. Rand and Sen. Nesbit for their support on the Senate side.  Also thanks to Bill Rowe from NC Justice for guiding this bill throughout the legislative process.

SB 1878 directs local governments to assess affordable developments built with federal low income housing tax credits at their rent-restricted value rather than their market value. This bill will save millions of dollars from the operating budget of these affordable developments and help ensure that these valuable assets continue to operate successfully. This legislation was part of a large bill sponsored by Sen. Dan Clodfelter and received strong support from Democrats and Republicans alike in both bodies. Special thanks to Cindy Wiggins-Tiede from CICCAR, and Scott Farmer & Bob Kucab from NCHFA for their support.

There are many more bills to tell you about, which we will do in next week’s Legislative Update.

Federal Housing News

As most of you already know, the Senate passed a Housing Bill that regulates Fannie and Freddie and contains the mechanism to create a National Housing Trust Fund. This legislation does not match the House bill so there will be considerable negotiating over a final agreement. It does not appear that they are going to work through a joint committee but bounce back and forth with proposals.  We are still very hopeful that a final bill can be agreed upon that will bring needed changes to mortgage lending, provide support to those facing foreclosure and create the mechanism to fund a National Housing Trust Fund.

More Federal Housing News is available here.

North Carolina Housing News

Please Save the Date for our Annual Housing Conference. This year’s event will be our first collaboration with CICCAR (whom we have partnered with on our last two conferences) and the NC Housing Finance Agency. It will be held at the Durham Marriott on October 16 & 17 with the title of “Housing Moving Forward”. For more information click here.

Please look at the Announcements section, there are many new job announcements, conferences and trainings.

We are pleased to announce that with some additional funding from NC HHS we will be offering a series of 10-12 Fair Housing Trainings for people with disabilities and advocacy organizations that serve them between now and the end of September. John Niffenegger in our office is setting those up. He has five currently scheduled with more to come. Unlike our trainings for landlords and property managers, these will be targeted to residents and no certificates will be offered. We will be partnering with NC Legal Aid and various Legal Services organizations to offer these free trainings in locations throughout the state.

Thanks again for being a member of the NC Housing Coalition,