Washington, D.C. – At a U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) called for passage of her HOME Investment Partnerships Reauthorization and Improvement Act, which would significantly increase the amount of federal funds available for middle class housing across the country.
Since 1992, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) has provided state and local agencies with funding for middle class housing, including helping Nevada build over 8,000 housing and rental units. However, the program is chronically underfunded and needs critical updates to assist more working families in renting or buying a home. Cortez Masto’s bill would authorize $5 billion in HOME funding for fiscal year 2024 and boost the funding for the program five percent annually through 2028, while making critical updates to the legislation to meet today’s needs.
“HOME is the largest affordable housing block grant in the country. My bill…would improve the ability of HOME to support homeownership…This bill would help thousands of hardworking families in Nevada and across the country purchase and stay in their homes,” said Senator Cortez Masto.
Matt Josephs—Senior Vice President at Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which supports local organizations in Nevada that build affordable homes—applauded Cortez Masto’s bill, saying “What we really like about your legislation is it increasing the authorized funding levels because there is not enough to go around, establishing the loan guarantee program to better leverage federal resources, streamlining the administrative requirements making them consistent with other federal programs, and expanding the ability of nonprofit housing organizations to really access some of these funds.”
LISC is a non-profit organization that supports community development initiatives across the country, including Community Services of Nevada (CSN), which offers home buying, renting, and homeownership services to working families.
Senator Cortez Masto has been a leader in the fight to lower housing costs and keep Nevadans in their homes. As Attorney General, she led the fight to hold Big Banks accountable for the foreclosure crisis, delivering $1.9 billion to homeowners in Nevada. Last year, she secured $4.8 million from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco to support Nevada affordable housing organizations, and cut through red tape to make it easier to build affordable housing across the state. She helped create the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) grant program in 2022 to help preserve and revitalize manufactured housing in eligible communities, and is working to make it permanent. She is also leading the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act and the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act to help build more affordable housing.
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