HUD APPROVES $28.4 MILLION NEIGHBORHOOD STABILIZATION PLAN FOR HOUSTON AND HARRIS COUNTY
Funding will be used to purchase foreclosed homes to stabilize neighborhoods

FORT WORTH - U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan today announced the approval of
the City of Houston's and Harris County's plans to use their allocations, which total $28,440,220, under HUD's new Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). Houston's allocation is $13,542,193 and Harris County's is $14,898,027.

HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program was created under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and provides nearly $4 billion to all 50 States, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and 250 cities and counties experiencing particularly high foreclosure problems and risk of property abandonment. The program permits these State and local governments to purchase foreclosed homes at a discount and to rehabilitate or redevelop them in order to respond to rising foreclosures and falling home values.

State and local governments can use their neighborhood stabilization grants:

• To acquire land and property;
• To demolish or rehabilitate abandoned properties;
• And/or to offer downpayment and closing cost assistance to low- to moderate-income homebuyers
  (household incomes not to exceed 120 percent of area median income).

In addition, these grantees can create "land banks" to assemble, temporarily manage, and dispose of vacant land
for the purpose of stabilizing neighborhoods and encouraging re-use or redevelopment of urban property.

The NSP Program also seeks to prevent future foreclosures by requiring housing counseling for families receiving homebuyer assistance. In addition, the Agency seeks to protect future homebuyers by requiring States and local grantees to ensure that new homebuyers under this program obtain a mortgage loan from a lender who agrees to comply with sound lending practices.

###