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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (13285)	8/27/2003 12:30:20 AM
From: David Jones	Respond to of 306849

$35 billion slated for `American Dream' bayarea.com FANNIE MAE ROLLS OUT HOUSING PROGRAM By Sue McAllister Mercury News Mortgage financing company Fannie Mae today will launch a $35 billion program to invest in affordable housing for both renters and prospective homeowners, a campaign that could benefit as many as 200,000 Bay Area residents, company officials said. The initiative is part of Fannie Mae's decadelong ``American Dream Commitment,'' a plan begun in 2000 to invest $2 trillion in programs nationwide that promote homeownership. Fannie Mae, the nation's largest source of mortgage financing, plans to invest the $35 billion in Bay Area housing programs over the next five years, helping finance things such as down-payment assistance programs, rental units for low- and moderate-income families, and rehabilitation of existing affordable-housing units. The Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group and its offshoot, the Housing Trust of Santa Clara County, worked with Fannie Mae this spring to present home-buyer education workshops at more than 30 schools and technology companies. Carl Guardino, president of the manufacturers' group, said the new investment from Fannie Mae will aid a variety of housing efforts in Santa Clara County. ``What Fannie Mae does so well is make sure that the folks on the front lines of the housing battle have the supplies -- in this case cash -- that are needed to be successful. Instead of duplicating existing efforts they help make sure existing efforts succeed,'' he said. Fannie Mae is a publicly traded, government-chartered company that buys mortgages from lenders and sells them to investors. Part of its mandate is to promote homeownership and affordable housing nationwide. Today's announcement extends a similar $16 billion pledge by Fannie Mae in 1999. Those funds were for these programs, among others: • Help finance first-time home-buyer assistance programs in San Jose, Fremont, San Mateo, San Francisco and Oakland. • Renovate the 700-unit El Rancho Verde Apartments in San Jose and preserve the complex as affordable housing when it was likely to revert to market-rate housing. • Rehabilitate Lion Villas, a 272-unit apartment complex in East San Jose for families earning 60 percent or less of the county's median income of $105,500. The new campaign will focus on assisting minorities and first-time home buyers, working with pilot programs to meet local housing needs, and financing construction of affordable rental housing, said Sheila Burks, director of Fannie Mae's Bay Area Partnership Office. ``Our ability to provide financing for some of these affordable rental developments makes that dream of affordable rental housing much more attainable for Bay Area families,'' Burks said. Fannie Mae also announced last week that its Bay Area office will extend its services to include Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties. Previously, its efforts had been limited to the nine counties ringing San Francisco Bay. In addition to buying bonds and making loans for the construction or rehabilitation of affordable rental housing, Fannie Mae will continue to finance anti-predatory-lending programs that allow homeowners to refinance mortgages with terms deemed ``abusive.'' The company will also continue working with public-housing authorities to help recipients of Section 8 rental housing subsidies become homeowners, Burks said. Alex Sanchez, executive director of the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara, said about two dozen Section 8 recipients in Santa Clara County are now using their federal housing subsidies toward mortgage payments instead of rent. The program was proposed nationally a few years ago and is slowly being implemented across the country. Sanchez said he welcomed the new investment from Fannie Mae, but said getting affordable housing built in Santa Clara County is a team effort. ``Fannie Mae is an important component, but they are only a component,'' Sanchez said. ``We also have to have a very strong public sector. . . . We need to have neighborhood support and communities recognizing that housing should be built.''