Private funding for repairs and improvements could come to America's senior housing for the first time under new HUD rule

2019-08-01T19:09:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is close to finalizing a major reform of its extensive senior housing portfolio, allowing nonprofit owners of 125,000 apartments to tap private sources of financing for the first time. HUD built nearly 2,900 of these properties over the past three decades. Though owned by nonprofits, the federal government funded their construction and subsidized tenant rents.

The nation's recent crop of senior housing projects could see much-needed improvements come to reality as the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) loosens rules dictating where nonprofit building owners can draw funds from to make building repairs.

Tom Davis, director of the Office of Recapitalization at HUD told The Wall Street Journal, “Fundamentally what we’re trying to do is avoid the kind of capital backlog problem that other parts of the affordable housing portfolio have, like public housing."

Cory Booker's housing plan targets structural issues

2019-06-14T17:51:00-04:00

2020 Democratic presidential contender Cory Booker has unveiled an ambitious housing and homelessness prevention plan.

With his plan, the current junior senator from New Jersey and former Newark mayor takes a multi-faceted approach that aims to address many of the structural issues that underpin the country's housing affordability crisis.

To help rent-burdened Americans better afford their existing housing, for example, the candidate proposes a so-called "renters credit" that would cap rental costs at "30 percent of income for working and middle-class Americans." The plan will refund money to renters whose housing costs exceed 30 percent of their before-tax income. In a Medium post announcing the plan, Booker writes, "According to researchers at Columbia University, the impact would be sweeping: the credit would benefit more than 57 million people, including nearly 17 million children, and lift 9.4 million Americans out of poverty. The median credit for a benefitting family would ...

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Private funding for repairs and improvements could come to America's senior housing for the first time under new HUD rule

Cory Booker's housing plan targets structural issues