HOME Work

ANCHORAGE - There are exceptions, of course, but twenty-five-year-olds usually haven't - and aren't really expected to have - made their mark in the world. Just out of college, just starting a family, just thinking about buying a first home, or just launching a career or business, most of the contributions they will make to their neighborhoods, their city and their nation are still a few years ahead of them.

That's not true of at least one twenty-five-year-old - the HOME Investment Partnership program. Signed into law "with great delight" by President George H.W. Bush on November 28, 1990 as part of the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act it quickly became the largest Federal block grant to States and local governments designed exclusively to create affordable housing for low-income families

"This legislation represents true bipartisanship, considerable give-and-take, and good-faith negotiation," President Bush said. "It reforms and reauthorizes existing programs to provide for community development, to operate and modernize public housing, and to assist in meeting the needs of low-income families, the elderly, and the handicapped. In addition, through HOPE, it provides the potential for the redirection of housing policy back toward the poor."

Pure and simple, HOME is an affordable housing toolbox providing eligible state and local with, said President Bush, "a wide variety of approaches" and resources allowing them to:

• Help homebuyers meet the down-payment and closing costs associated with their purchase;
• Assist in the rehabilitation – up to code – of both ownership and rental housing;
• Cover other "necessary expenses" related to the development of "non-luxury" housing:
• Acquire or improve sites or demolish dilapidated housing to "make way" for HOME-assisted housing;
• Offer tenant-based rental assistance contracts of up to 2 years.

The "landmark legislation," he said, would "break down the walls separating low-income people from the American dream of opportunity and homeownership."

So, was President Bush right? Has HOME fulfilled its promise? The numbers say "yes." Since 1990 in Alaska HOME funds have been used to build or preserve some 540 units of affordable rental housing. Helped more than 1,250 families buy a home. Rehabilitated almost 550 houses, bringing them up to code. That's a lot of walls, President Bush might observe, that have been broken down.

Numbers alone don't tell the HOME story. "An investment in HOME," HUD Secretary Julián Castro has explained, "is an investment in the American people." And you see that "investment" paying big dividends across Alaska.

Visit Juneau, the state capital and one of the tightest housing markets in the state. In late 2012, the 42-unit Gastineau Apartments were destroyed by fire. Wasting little time and concerned the Gastineau's owner would move to rebuild the units, within weeks the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation had announced $7.6 million award to Volunteers of America to produce 40 affordable housing and, says The Juneau Empire, "ease the crunch" caused by the fire. HOME funds were a critical element in AHFC's plans.

"Not good enough," say some eager to gut the HOME program.. From 2010 to 2015, funding for HOME was cut in half. Today there are active efforts to cut HOME funding another 90 percent and "essentially eliminate the program altogether," the coalition observed. America, some apparently believe, can't afford affordable housing.

When, 25 years ago, President Bush signed the bill creating HOME he said it "presents us with opportunity to renew our commitment to the goals we all share: decent, safe, and affordable housing." Twenty-five years and 1.2 million of HOME-funded affordable housing units later, has proven a commitment well-kept with, wrote a coalition of more than 1,500 national, state, regional and local housing and community development organizations "a proven track record of successfully addressing the whole spectrum of housing needs, from homeownership to rental to rehabilitation and from urban to suburban and rural communities."

But now that commitment is at risk. "Our families and communities deserve better," the coalition wrote. 25 years after he created HOME, President Bush likely would agree.

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