Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and ranking member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) issued a joint statement on Monday regarding their plan to investigate the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) HOME Investment Partnerships Program, due to a investigation published by The Washington Post last week titled A Million Dollar Wasteland.
The Washington Post investigation alleges that projects funded by the HOME Investment Partnerships Program have been stalled or abandoned with no oversight from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). “Nationwide, nearly 700 projects awarded $400 million have been idling for years…Some have languished for a decade or longer even as much of the country struggles with record-high foreclosures and a dramatic loss of affordable housing…[HUD] does not track the pace of construction and often fails to spot defunct deals, instead trusting local agencies to police projects.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) responded to this investigation through blog posts The HOME Program Works! and Home is a Catalyst for Change on its official blog site, The HUDdle, stating “these delayed projects that [The Washington Post] cites are a small fraction (approximately 2.5 percent) of 28,000 active developments. Many of these open projects are newly constructed single-family homes that remain on the market because we’re in the middle of a housing crisis in this country.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) HOME Investment Partnerships Program, created in 1992, allocates approximately $2 billion to states and localities to develop affordable housing for low- and very low-income households.
This unflattering investigation comes after The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announcement on May 4th that the HOME Investment Partnerships Program had produced its one-millionth unit of affordable housing.
Read more about The Washington Post Investigation:
