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  • Comment Detail

  • Date: 08/12/24
    First Name: Peter
    Last Name: Dean
    Email: dean@uhab.org
    Organization Type: organization
    Organization: Urban Homesteading Assistance Board

  • Comment

    Duty to Serve Comments:
    For 50 years, UHAB (the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board) has empowered low- and moderate-income residents to take control of their housing and become homeowners in the buildings where they already live. We turn distressed rental housing into lasting affordable co-ops, and provide comprehensive training and technical assistance to keep these homes healthy and stable for the long term. UHAB has created 30,000 cooperative homes across the five boroughs.

    UHAB thinks that permanently affordable housing cooperatives, including limited-equity housing cooperatives, and including those on land owned by Community Land Trusts (CLTs) should be included in both the homeownership programs and the multifamily rental programs and their respective objectives. This is justified by the fact that cooperatives are both a form of home ownership and a form of multifamily rental, one where the owners of the corporation are the residents who have occupancy rights to particular units.

    As UHAB learned when we did a Ford Foundation funded study a few years ago there are over 150,000 homes in affordable cooperatives nationally. This is a significant number and warrants inclusion in the Duties to Serve of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. UHAB is working to nationally with other’s working to produce new affordable housing cooperatives and to preserve existing affordable cooperatives that require training and reinvestment. Affordable housing cooperatives are one of the most affordable homeownership options in most markets whether smaller cities, like Nashville, or Portland, Maine or larger cities like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

    In rural areas many 515 properties are at risk and could be preserved through limited-equity cooperatives and other affordable housing cooperatives including membership or non-equity cooperatives. Such an effort would require technical assistance such as through the Rural Developer Capacity Building program if development of, or conversion to, cooperatives were an eligible use of technical assistance funds. Therefore, cooperatives should be included in Fannie Mae’s Rural Objective B and Freddie Mac’s Rural strategy objectives in each’s Duty to Serve language.

    Housing cooperative are included in the manufactured housing objectives, which is appropriate. We would recommend that housing cooperatives also be included in the other affordable housing objectives as well.