The Biden Plan Allocates Billions For Affordable Housing is Here
The US President has released a superb expenditure plan that includes an allocated budget for improving housing loans in the whole country. However, residents of Fort Worth will have to keep patience for a few months or years to get a positive impact, even if any such law is imposed.
As per the announcement, the expenditure plan includes $150 billion for affordable housing, which is dedicated not only to the building but also to improving and rehabilitating around 1 million homes. It also allocates a budget of $65 billion to preserve public housing that will facilitate rental for hundreds of thousands of families.
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This can be the most significant investment made ever in history for the people of the United States to afford their own homes even with low annual income.
President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Diane Yentel, said in a statement Thursday, “This would be the most significant single investment in quality, stable, affordable homes for the country’s lowest-income people in history.”
However, it will take time for residents of Fort Worth and Tarrant County to get most of the benefits of this plan. However, it is not mentioned how long it will take. This perfect plan is yet to be approved to form a law. President Biden has just proposed a budget valued at $1.75 trillion, including various development initiatives for low-income people. However, it may take weeks or even months for this process.
Unique plans for Rental assistance for US residents
As per the president’s proposal, $25 billion is dedicated to rental assistance. A particular budget will be dedicated for housing choice vouchers for rental assistance to very low-income families that is an initiative from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The county’s Housing Assistance Office director, Wayne Pollard, said, “Tarrant County residents have struggled to obtain housing vouchers for years.”
As per him, there is a long waiting list for Tarrant County’s housing choice eligible applicant families that have yet to receive benefits since 2017.
Mr. Pollard even said, “If Congress agrees to the plan, Tarrant County may not see the effects of the voucher expansion until early spring.” So, according to him, the federal government should take extraordinary measures to provide benefits to them as soon as possible.
As per him, the federal government should pay attention to affordable housing plans for them so that they can get the most benefit out of it. They should make a perfect plan for the distribution of housing vouchers so that county residents get benefits as soon as the law is passed in Washington. As they have minimal housing in the county, that is why they should be most benefited.
A NEED FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Pollard wants to solve the issue of high demand and limited houses in Tarrant county. Due to limited homes and high demand, prices touch sky-high. He said even if the new law is made and new housing units are manufactured, it will take a minimum of 120 days for the distribution of housing vouchers for the eligible applicants to be benefitted.
Biden’s proposal includes a dedicated budget for more than 150,000 homes for public rental homes that are worth around $15 billion. Out of $15 billion, Texas will receive a dedicated $946 million as per an estimate by The Housing Coalition.
As per their previous report of 2019, there are more than 190,000 families with extremely low income but have only 40,000 public rental homes in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington.
“This Build Back Better Bill is very important for our families,” Pollard said. “We need places for families to go … There’s not a lot of affordable housing in North Texas.”
“You need labor to get this work done as well,” Pollard said. “Everything is dependent on something else.”
He is emphasizing the time that will be taken to build these high-demand public homes as it would definitely take a minimum of two to three years.
This proposal results from a long-lasting conflict between the white house and the democratic party about what should be included in it and whatnot. However, it is an improvised version of the proposed bill. That excludes paid family leaves and free community colleges.
Other initiatives that made it into the White House proposal are:
- The medicover is proposed to include hearing care and aids.
- The preschool benefits are expected to expand till six years rather than 3-4-years.
- It includes a year expansion to the child tax credit for those who have filed tax returns combined for income less than $150,000 for both parents and income less than $75,000 for single parents.
- Medicaid coverage is also expected to expand for lower premium rates for residents in states that include Texas.
