HUD Celebrates 50 Years of Investing in Communities, Helping Families Access Affordable Housing, and Ensuring Safe and Affordable Manufactured Homes

August 21, 2024 / Source: HUD

WASHINGTON – This week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Housing and Community Development (HCD) Act of 1974, which created several programs—including the Housing Choice Voucher program, the Project Based Rental Assistance program and Community Block Development Grant program—to provide access to quality, safe, affordable homes for all. Collectively, these programs ensure families have access to affordable housing. The legislation also included the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards Act, creating what is commonly referred to as the HUD Code, which maintains national standards for safe, durable, efficient and affordable manufactured homes. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, HUD continues to expand these successful programs in alignment with the President’s goals to lower housing costs for all Americans and reduce barriers to affordable housing.

“Like President Biden, and Vice President Harris, I believe there is nothing Americans can’t do when we do it together. The groundbreaking programs we are celebrating today have provided affordable housing to countless Americans in urban, suburban, and rural communities. These programs demonstrate that when we act boldly, we meaningfully improve people’s daily lives,” said Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman. “We also know there is more to be done and that is why this Administration has proposed ambitious new housing investments and we call on Congress to act to help people with current high housing costs.”

On August 22, 1974, the HCD Act was signed into law, to provide the foundations for better housing for all Americans and boost the long-range prospects a robust domestic housing market. The 1974 Act helped build the nation’s largest housing programs to meet the needs of lower income households. These programs include:

• The Housing Choice Voucher program (tenant-based Section 8), which unlocked existing privately owned rental housing for very low-income families, now serves more than 2.3 million households.
• The Project Based Rental Assistance program (project-based Section 8), which provided subsidy for private developers to build housing to serve very low-income households, now serves more than 1.3 million households.

The legislation of 1974 also created the Community Block Development Grant (CDBG), a resource for more than 1,000 local communities to address several community development needs, including rehabilitating housing and upgrading aging infrastructure. Through CDBG-Disaster Recovery, more than $100 billion has been used since 1992 to help communities across America manage long-term recovery needs after extreme weather events and major disasters. The legislation also authorized the creation of a nationwide performance-based building code for manufactured housing, which simultaneously improved the safety of new manufactured housing, improved efficiency of mass production and reduced construction costs. Today, the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards, commonly known as the “HUD Code,” remains the preemptive federal standard for ensuring that manufactured housing – which houses more than 20 million Americans – remain safe, durable, and affordable. In the past three years, HUD has ensured the safe and affordable production of approximately 360,000 manufactured homes that adhere to the HUD Code.

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, HUD is not only celebrating the programs, but it is also investing in making them better:

• Working to permanently authorize the CDBG-Disaster Recovery Program to more expeditiously and efficiently help communities recover. HUD, through the Biden-Harris Administration, is simultaneously seeking to permanently authorize the CDBG-DR program while also issuing a “Universal Notice,” which would significantly improve the transparency, predictability, and efficacy of these funds directed to impacted communities.
• Taking extensive steps to strengthen, streamline, and expand the Housing Choice Voucher program to help families find affordable housing. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the program has seen its largest expansion in 20 years, including 70,000 Emergency Housing Vouchers and 20,000 new fair share vouchers. The Biden-Harris Administration has also implemented the biggest program regulatory updates since 1996, including changes to make it easier to transition homeless Americans into permanent housing. HUD has also increased maximum voucher rents to ensure that voucher holders can better compete for units in markets where rents are rising. In addition, President Biden’s 2025 Budget proposes $32.8 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program, which will provide housing for 2.3 million individuals and families, including funds for new vouchers to help 20,000 more low-income individuals and families find and afford housing. The President’s budget also proposes $7.5 billion to create new project-based rental assistance at a scale not seen in decades.
• Making HUD-assisted homes more resilient than ever. Under the Biden-Harris Administration’s Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, HUD is helping to finance energy efficiency and climate resilience measures at more than 170 properties participating in its Multifamily project-based rental assistance programs, rehabilitating the rental homes of more than 20,000 individuals and families to make them more energy efficient and climate resilient.
• Proposing critical and consistent updates to the HUD Code to ensure manufactured homes are safe, quality places to live. During the Biden-Harris Administration, HUD has raised the importance of Manufactured Housing through creation of a new Office of Manufactured Housing Programs. This Administration implemented a large HUD code update in 2021 that included provisions for attached manufactured homes (townhome style), attached garages and carports, and included requirements for carbon monoxide alarms for homes with gas appliances among other changes., HUD has proposed, and is soon finalizing, one of the largest updates to the HUD Code in more than three decades. In addition to making changes that will increase the quality, sustainability, and resilience of manufactured homes, the new rule would enable single family multi-unit homes to be built under the HUD Code for the first time, extending the cost-saving benefits of manufactured housing to denser urban and suburban infill settings.

HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research is publishing a number of research papers looking back at the Housing Choice Voucher and the Community Development Block Grant programs over the past 50 years with their Summer and Fall editions of Cityscape. The Housing Choice Voucher program edition is currently available, and the Community Development Block Grant edition which will publish in November. In addition, HUD has published a research roadmap for offsite construction of housing that looks back at HUD’s role over the past 50 years.

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