MAR Online Blog

This is an NAR contributing article written by Erin Stackley

On Thursday, February 29, the White House announced its “New Actions to Boost Housing Supply and Lower Housing Costs,” aimed at creating more affordable homes and increasing transparency in rental housing. The administration will be bolstering existing programs, such as the HOME Investment Partnership Program grants, Federal Housing Administration and Federal Financing Bank risk-sharing, and the Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program, to add to and protect the existing supply of affordable housing. It is also creating a new funding grant from HUD with $225 million to support manufactured housing communities, offering expanded financing option to preserve their affordability, and increasing the FHA Title 1 loan limits for manufactured housing.

On increasing transparency in rental housing, the administration is providing clarification on existing policies, including:

• Clarifying banned non-rent fees in HUD-assisted properties. This builds off of the 2023 RFI on tenant application/screening practices and the FTC proposed rule banning junk fees.
• Ensuring tenants’ rights for military members. All 200 DoD bases will adopt the Department’s Tenant Bill of Rights (which was developed and released in 2021).
• Provide new resources on evictions. HUD has a new fact sheet which highlights (existing) prohibitions on evictions/threatening to evict tenants, most of which fall under the Fair Housing Act.  Additionally, HUD released a “Policy & Practice” paper with proposed eviction policies for states/localities, including:
• Requiring good-cause evictions;
• Increase access to legal services;
• Improve access to courtrooms;
• Using data to identify at-risk households;
• Sharing data across sectors;
• Offering financial assistance; and
• Providing housing “navigators” who can assist with connecting tenants to supportive services.
• Promoting prospective renters’ rights during tenant screening process. The Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Justice, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development will jointly publish a fact sheet on the rights prospective renters have in the screening process – these are protections that exist already under the Fair Credit Report Act and the Fair Housing Act.

NAR supports the White House’s efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing, addressing the dire supply shortage the country is facing.  Additionally, we support its work to increase awareness of Fair Housing Act requirements and protections. Policies that create new burdens for housing providers – especially “mom-and-pops” who own few rental properties – restricts their abilities to control their own property and make it more difficult to evict tenants who have broken their lease terms, which will result in many of them leaving the rental housing market. NAR will closely monitor the actions the White House and the federal agencies take following this announcement and will continue to advocate for increasing the supply of affordable housing and to protect the rights of housing providers.