The U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced new efforts on June 24 to increase the supply of housing and relieve pressure on the cost of housing. The new policies use existing authorities to implement changes, but the Secretary noted that “given the scale of the challenge, we must and will continue to do more.”

The efforts include a new program administered by the Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) Fund to provide an additional $100 million in affordable housing financing over the next three years. Yellen also called on Federal Home Loan Banks to increase their spending on housing programs. Lastly, the Treasury Department updated the Capital Magnet Fund to provide greater flexibility for affordable housing financing and released a new “How-To Guide” to support state and local government in using recovery funds for housing construction.

The efforts build on other recent federal attention on affordable housing supply, like the indefinite extension of the risk-share initiative between HUD and state and local housing finance agencies announced earlier this year. According to a Treasury Department press release, HUD and Treasury are now actively exploring a risk-share initiative improvement to provide interest rate predictability, which would substantially increase the number of new projects financed through the program.

LeadingAge applauds the Treasury Department’s actions but calls on the Administration to commit to a crisis-level housing intervention to address record-level housing cost burdens.