PROVIDENCE, RI – As America faces an affordable housing crunch, U.S. Senator Jack Reed today announced that Rhode Island will receive a $3 million boost to put toward affordable housing, courtesy of the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF), a program he created back in 2008.

Reed, a senior member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, who also serves as the Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, Urban Development and Related Agencies (THUD), led the successful effort to create the HTF, which was authorized by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

"There is a real shortage of affordable housing, and this is a smart investment in increasing the number of affordable homes and strengthening communities,” said Senator Reed.  “This money will be put to good use in Rhode Island building, preserving, and rehabilitating rental housing. I created the Housing Trust Fund to provide communities with the resources they need to help address the affordable housing shortage.  Workers should be able to live closer to their jobs and spend more time with their families. Ensuring a healthy housing market is part of that equation and critical to our economic future.”

Administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the HTF is an affordable housing production and preservation program that will complement existing federal, state, and local efforts to increase and preserve the supply of decent, safe, and sanitary affordable housing for extremely low-income and very low-income households, including homeless families. 

To ensure that Rhode Island and other small states received a fair amount of funding, Senator Reed included a small state minimum of $3 million in the authorizing legislation.

To date, HTF has allocated over $900 million in federal affordable housing assistance to states nationwide, and Rhode Island has now received a total of $15 million in federal HTF funding.