The Details of President Biden's Proposed $213 Billion Housing Plan

• June 10th 2021

by Nena Perry-Brown

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President Joe Biden put forth a massive infrastructure plan earlier this spring, which would invest $2 trillion over the course of a decade in the country's built environment.

More than $200 billion would go toward ameliorating the housing crisis via affordable housing production and preservation, along with retrofitting commercial buildings. This is expected to create and preserve at least two million homes using the following means:

• A proposed bill, called the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (NHIA), which would dedicate $20 billion toward tax credits that would be distributed over the next five years. Those tax credits would go toward building or fixing up around 500,000 houses in hopes of creating more affordable housing supply for first-time buyers.
• A combination of tax credits, grants, project-based rental assistance, and other funding would go toward targeting affordable housing preservation and production in underserved areas. The hope is that this will create at least one million energy-efficient units.
• Congress could establish a competitive grant program to incentivize states and localities to phase out exclusionary (ie. single family-only) zoning, which also includes regulatory hurdles like minimum lot size and minimum parking requirements.
• Another $40 billion would go toward rehabilitating the country's public housing stock and making it more energy efficient and sustainable.
• Through programs like block grants, tax credits, and the Weatherization Assistance Program, other funds would be used to update houses to make them more sustainable and clean energy-ready. Specifically, $27 billion would go toward launching a Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator, which will in part be used to retrofit residential and commercial buildings, especially in underserved areas. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the-details-of-bidens-proposed-213-billion-housing-plan/18370.