Texas housers

Housing Texas and TxLIHIS partnered with housing providers — such as Habitat for Humanity, financial institutions, and a broad range of advocacy groups including the Texas Council on Family Violence — to advocate funding for the Texas Housing Trust Fund. The trust fund is the only state-funded resource for the development and preservation of affordable housing. It currently receives about $4 million per year. At the beginning of the session, we identified an ambitious goal: a dedicated revenue    

source of $30 – $50 million per year for the Housing Trust Fund.

 

Following several meetings with Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, we altered our goal to a $30 million one-time appropriation. Lt. Governor Dewhurst and his staff worked closely with advocates to win support for this Housing Trust Fund increase. In the end, the Senate Finance Committee appropriated $5 million in additional funding. This is a reversal of a nearly decade-long decline in funding for the Trust Fund. It also sets the groundwork for a major push for a dedicated funding source during the 81st legislative session. Over the interim, TxLIHIS, Housing Texas, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, housers across the state, and consumers will be working together to ensure the additional funding is maximized to benefit low-income families in need.

 

 

Bankers, low-income consumers, advocates, academics and developers reached common ground on expanding the Texas Housing Trust fund at the fourth annual meeting of the Texas Housing Forum in Austin on February 5 and 6. By embracing their shared concern with the plight of families who cannot afford a decent home, these housing stakeholders endorsed a Texas Housing Trust Fund proposal.

 

Specifically, Housing Forum participants agreed on the following:

 

Funding Source

 

Funding Goal

 

Structure

 

Principles

 

 

The next step for building a Texas Housing Trust Fund

Everyone can play an important role in expanding the Texas Housing Trust Fund and bringing affordable homes to thousands of working Texas families.

 

 

The campaign will only be effective if it has a broad base of support.

 

 

The Texas Housing Trust Fund Campaign

 

The goal of the Texas Housing Trust Fund is to provide a sufficient source of funding to build, rehabilitate and preserve housing for the over three million working poor Texans who cannot afford a decent, safe, and healthy place to live.

 

Housing is at the very foundation of every healthy community. Yet in communities across Texas, affordable housing is out of reach for many hard working Texans. The cost of housing continues to rise, while earnings simply are not keeping pace.  In Texas, a full time worker must earn $13.67 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment.

 

Texas is second only to California in the number of people living in poverty, yet the state falls far behind other states in supporting affordable housing. The current Texas Housing Trust Fund receives only $4 million per year, about what the state spends annually on magazine and periodical subscriptions.

 

Border communities and Habitat for Humanity affiliates use the Housing Trust Fund to support the Bootstrap Program, a nationally acclaimed program that helps families build affordable homes and revitalize their neighborhoods.

 

With a dedicated source of funding of $40 million a year, the Texas Housing Trust Fund can expand programs like the Bootstrap Program across the state, and to the Texans who need housing the most: people with disabilities, our seniors, and working poor families with children.  

 

A Texas Housing Trust Fund will:

 

 

Affordable housing has a long history of being a bipartisan issue. We want to continue that tradition, with bipartisan support for a Texas Housing Trust Fund.