New guidance from the Treasury makes it easier to use American Rescue Plan funds for affordable housing.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced new guidance to increase the ability of state, local, and tribal governments to use American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds to boost the supply of affordable housing in their communities. This step follows a commitment in the Administration’s recently released Housing Supply Action Plan to leverage American Rescue Plan funds for investments in affordable housing as part of a broader strategy to increase the nation’s housing supply and ease housing costs over time. Treasury has previously encouraged governments to dedicate a portion of the $350 billion available to them under the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) toward the development, repair, and operation of affordable housing units. New Treasury data shows that those efforts have yielded strong results: through March 31, 2022, over 600 state and local governments had budgeted $12.9 billion in SLFRF funds to meet housing needs and lower housing-related costs, including $4.2 billion for affordable housing development and preservation. Today’s updates build on this progress and are expected to help local officials fulfill and expand upon these commitments to boost the country’s supply of affordable housing and bring down costs for the American people over time. “Increasing the nation’s housing supply is essential to lowering shelter costs over the long-term,” said Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo. “Treasury continues to strongly encourage state and local governments to dedicate a portion of the historic funding available through President Biden’s American Rescue Plan toward building and rehabilitating affordable housing in their communities and the actions being announced today will make it even easier for them to do so.” In January 2022, Treasury issued a Final Rule for SLFRF intended to provide broad flexibility for the use of funds, including for affordable housing uses that the Department has strongly encouraged. Guidance released by Treasury recently takes two additional steps: (1) increasing flexibility to use SLFRF to fully finance long-term affordable housing loans and (2) expanding presumptively eligible affordable housing uses to further maximize the availability of SLFRF funds for affordable housing.

Source: The US Treasury Department