A trio of Democratic senators have introduced the Yes in God’s Back Yard (YIGBY) Act, new legislation designed to assist faith-based organizations and colleges to transform underused property into affordable housing.
The YIGBY Act would provide federal assistance to faith-based organizations and colleges seeking to use their land for affordable rental housing. It would also offer technical assistance to local governments on best practices to streamline permitting and reduce barriers.
Furthermore, the legislation creates $50 million per year in grants for communities that adopt policies removing barriers to affordable housing on property owned by faith-based organizations or colleges.
“Too many families are getting priced out of their communities because of the skyrocketing cost of housing,” said Sen. Warner. “If we want to make housing more affordable, we need to get creative and take advantage of opportunities that already exist. The YIGBY Act is about breaking down barriers and giving faith communities and colleges the support they need to put their land to work creating safe, affordable homes.”
Warner added that has reintroduced two additional bills to expand affordable housing – the LIFT Homebuyers Act (LIFT Act) creates a program offering 20-year fixed-rate mortgages tailored for low- and moderate-income, first-generation homebuyers, and the Scaling Community Lenders Act that would increase lending capacity for community financial institutions.
It all sounds laudable except for a few things. 1st if universities/colleges and faith based institutions (mainly Catholic churches) have this extra vacant land or under used land then why haven’t the brain trusts of these organizations already developed housing for our lower income citizens? So it takes extra federal monies to jump start these proposed programs while most of these organizations already calling for affordable housing and yet did little to nothing now or in the past. The Lift program must be a buy down 20 year mortgage rate. What rate is considerable affordable? 20 year rates are currently around 5.50%(+/-) at par. 1 point usually buys down a rate by 0.125% (+/-) over the term of the loan. If their discounted affordable target rate is 3% then isn’t that around 20 points? At a $100k mortgage then isn’t that $20k of federal government money for that 1 specific buyer? This sounds somewhat like the failed forgivable college loan proposal under Biden. NOTE: There are already boat loads of federal and state grant monies available for low to moderate income buyers. Also some zip codes are targeted harder with extra monies since they need extra motivation for buyers to consider. If all these proposed housing programs were funded by actual offsetting current year budget cuts then I’d be more on board but still skeptical nonetheless.
Agreed!!