WASHINGTON - Today, as President Biden prepares to deliver the 2024 State of the Union address, the White House highlighted the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) efforts in a new fact sheet, detailing ways the Department and the entire Biden-Harris Administration are boosting housing supply and easing housing costs for Americans. This announcement builds on recent efforts by the White House and HUD.

“Ahead of tonight’s State of the Union address, the Biden-Harris Administration is reinforcing the importance of expanding access to safe and affordable housing for all,” said HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge. “Together with our partners across the federal government, we are committed to boosting our housing supply to increase affordability and removing barriers to advance homeownership.”

The fact sheet includes several HUD actions to boost supply, expand assistance, and cut housing costs for everyday Americans:

• Expanding Assistance and Support for Renters:
  • Over the last three years, HUD has secured rental assistance for more than 100,000 additional households. The President is calling on Congress to further expand rental assistance to more than half of a million households, including by providing a voucher guarantee for low-income veterans and youth aging out of foster care – the first such voucher guarantees in history.
  • HUD released summaries of banned non-rent fees in its Multifamily, Public Housing, and Housing Choice Vouchers/Project Based Vouchers programs. These new resources make clear that certain fees, such as application and screening fees in Public Housing and Multifamily subsidized programs, are prohibited, and help ensure that tenants are not charged or penalized for impermissible fees. These actions build on voluntary commitments the President announced last summer from major rental housing platforms to provide customers with the total, upfront cost on rental properties on their platform.
• Building Homeownership Opportunities:
  • HUD reduced the mortgage insurance premium for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgages, saving an estimated 850,000 homebuyers and homeowners an estimated $800 per year.
  • President Biden is calling on Congress to pass a mortgage relief credit that would provide middle-class first-time homebuyers with an annual tax credit of $5,000 a year for two years. This is the equivalent of reducing the mortgage rate by more than 1.5 percentage points for two years on the median home and will help more than 3.5 million middle-class families purchase their first home over the next two years.
  • The President continues to call on Congress to provide up to $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers whose families haven’t benefited from the generational wealth building associated with homeownership. This proposal is estimated to help 400,000 families purchase their first home.
• Boosting Housing Supply:
  • The President is calling on Congress to pass legislation to build and renovate more than 2 million homes, which would close the housing supply gap and lower housing costs for renters and homeowners. This legislation would build on executive actions in the Biden-Harris Administration’s Housing Supply Action Plan that contributed to record housing construction last year.
  • That plan includes an expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit to build or preserve 1.2 million more affordable rental units and a new Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, the first tax provision to build or renovate affordable homes for homeownership, which would lead to the construction or preservation of over 400,000 starter homes in communities throughout the country.
  • The President is unveiling a new $20 billion competitive grant fund as part of his Budget to support communities across the country to build more housing and lower rents and homebuying costs. This fund would support the construction of affordable multifamily rental units; incentivize local actions to remove unnecessary barriers to housing development; pilot innovative models to increase the production of affordable and workforce rental housing; and spur the construction of new starter homes for middle-class families.

When President Biden and Vice President Harris entered office in 2021, conditions were bleak. High housing costs and job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a rise in homelessness and housing insecurity for many working families. Since the onset of the Biden-Harris Administration, Secretary Fudge has delivered on promises to invest in housing like never before. Since Fiscal Year 2021, HUD has:

• Built and repaired more than half a million units of affordable housing.
• Helped approximately 2 million homeowners with FHA mortgages avoid foreclosure and helped thousands avoid eviction.
• Issued more new rental assistance vouchers in the last 3 years than have been issued in any 3-year period in 20 years.
• Served or permanently housed more than 1.2 million people experiencing homelessness.

See more on President Biden’s 2024 State of the Union here.