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The HOME Program works!

May 15, 2011

Today, the Washington Post published the first in a series of articles focused on HUD’s HOME Investment Partnerships Program.  The HOME Program is the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed exclusively to produce affordable housing for low-income families.  Since 1992, approximately 650 ‘participating jurisdictions’ produced more than a million affordable homes, an outstanding accomplishment by any measure.

After a year-long investigation, Post reporter Debbie Cenziper concluded what we’ve always known—producing affordable housing is hard work and some communities do a better job of it than others.  As with everything, there are reasons for the production delays Ms. Cenziper discovered in her research ranging from perfectly legitimate to absolutely outrageous.  

Sadly, the Post failed to recognize that, in spite of examples of incompetence and outright mismanagement by certain local governments, overall the HOME Program works.  For more than a year, HUD provided data and context to Ms Cenziper and for all this, she failed to recognize the obvious.  Yes, there are problems when local communities pick bad developers and it’s no wonder that projects stall or even fail as a consequence.  But to lead readers to believe the whole HOME Program is a failure and that HUD is “looking the other way” is just plain wrong.

To read the entire HUD response at The HUDdle go here.

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