(RECAP: HUD awarded $42 million in grants to provide housing counseling for families attempting to navigate the home buying process. According the the HUD, these “housing counseling grants and the additional funding they leverage will help more than 1.4 million households find housing, make more informed housing choices, or keep their current homes.” Of this money, $40 million will go directly to existing counseling agencies and organizations. The remaining $2 million will be used to train and certify individual housing counselors.)

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(RECAP: If you are looking for an upbeat assessment of consumer sentiment regarding housing, a recent survey by the MacArthur Foundation is not the place to go. Its most recent survey of housing attitudes shows many Americans feel that home ownership is increasingly out of reach and close to a third of respondents don’t reckon the housing crisis is over. In the 2016 How Housing Matters Survey, Americans overwhelmingly consider stable, affordable housing as essential to economic security for families, tying with saving for retirement at 85 percent, behind only having a excellent job at 90 percent. Yet 81 percent of respondents believe housing affordability is a problem and six in 10 called it a serious problem. Sixty-eight percent believe it is more challenging to secure affordable housing today than it was for previous generations, a belief held across all educational, income, regional and demographic cohorts.

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(RECAP: Today, HUD is proposing a new method to recalculate rental subsidies in a manner that would expand neighborhood options for households living in these particularly restrictive housing markets. For the next 60 days, HUD is accepting public comment on a proposal to change the geography it uses to calculate so-called Honest Market Rents (FMRs). In these areas, HUD is proposing to transition from a metropolitan area-wide approach to setting FMRs down to the zip code level as a means to expand the options these families have to live in lower poverty neighborhoods. If instituted today, this ‘Small Area Honest Market Rent’ approach would impact 31 metropolitan areas, including Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News (VA-NC) and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria (DC-VA-MD). These Metropolitan Areas currently meet the Proposed Rule’s threshold of voucher concentration and potential for SAFMRs to be effective, and thus would be required to institute this new approach.)

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