Check out this month's Affordable Housing newsletter!
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Spotlight
HomeReserve: Key Findings for Homeownership Programming
Homeownership is the largest marker of equity and leads to generational wealth-building. With that in mind, Prosperity Now collaborated with JPMorgan Chase to pilot a Mortgage Reserve Account (MRA) savings match program providing down payment assistance to low-to-moderate income first-time homeowners. Read on for 3 key findings that can help design programs that ensure homeownership is affordable and sustainable.
Planning Your 2022 Prosperity Summit Experience? Start With These Sessions!
Prosperity Now will host the biannual Prosperity Summit from September 19-21 in Atlanta, Georgia. The three-day conference is an opportunity for racial equity advocates to present, network and workshop with 1,500+ fellow attendees around the year’s theme of Marching On: Reimagining Economic Justice for All. Our Affordable Housing Network members can look forward to various related sessions, including:
- County Housing Solutions Matchmaker: A New Resource for Housing Leaders
- Integrating Credit Building into Affordable Housing
- Housing Initiatives in Native Communities
- Embedding Asset-building in Subsidized Housing: A Look at HUD's FSS Program
- Zoned Out: Eliminating Discrimination in Housing Policy
- Using Community-led Grantmaking to Advance Housing Justice
- A Study on Expanding Black & Hispanic Homeownership in Newark
- Reimagining NIMBYs: Hacks for Developing Affordable Housing Strategies
From the Field
Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing | National Low Income Housing Coalition
Developed by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Out of Reach documents the inequitable gap between renters' take-home pay and the national average rental cost.
Housing Underproduction™ in the U.S. 2022 | Up For Growth
Up For Growth recently released research elevating real-world and useful solutions for advocates and policymakers to combat the lack of new housing in the U.S.
Policy Updates
Strengthening and Modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act
While the newly proposed reforms to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) would help modernize regulation standards, they do not go far enough to ensure adequate investments in communities of color. This is why we are calling for the CRA to include explicit consideration of race and ethnicity to ensure lending to communities of color. Wealth building starts with credit access, and the time to push for CRA standards that more explicitly advance credit access equity is now.
#BuildBackforJustice: Join Our August Recess Day of Action
On Tuesday, August 23 we will hold a Day of Action to collectively urge Congress to #BuildBackForJustice. While the Inflation Reduction Act makes important investments in healthcare, climate justice and brings in much needed revenue to our government, without resources targeted for families who are struggling, the current reconciliation package is not enough for households reeling from the impacts of inflation and the pandemic. Please use this toolkit to post on social media, contact your legislators, and engage local media!
In the News
California’s Emergency Housing Voucher Program Could Help Turn Around Its Housing Crisis | CalMatters
Section 8 vouchers are perhaps the federal government’s most popular response to affordable housing disparities in recent decades. In response to COVID-19, California released numerous emergency vouchers last year to help house families that had been waitlisted for years after applying for Section 8 housing. CalMatter’s recent article sheds light on the successes and barriers that this voucher implementation is currently experiencing.
