Initiatives
 
Texas Housing Trust Fund
Bankers, low-income consumers, advocates, academics and developers reached common ground on expanding the Texas Housing Trust fund at the fourth annual meeting of the Texas Housing Forum in Austin on February 5 and 6. By embracing their shared concern with the plight of families who cannot afford a decent home, these housing stakeholders endorsed a Texas Housing Trust Fund proposal.
 
Specifically, Housing Forum participants agreed on the following:
 
Funding Source
A document-recording fee is the best funding source for the Trust Fund and a popular source for housing funds in other states. Analysis by TxLIHIS indicates that a document recording fee of $10 could generate $40 million per year for the Texas Housing Trust Fund. The second most popular funding source among Forum participants was a fee on real estate transfers.
 
Funding Goal
$50-$100 million per year.
 
Current status
As a result of the work of Housing Texas the Texas Legislature voted to double the Housing Trust Fund for 2008-2009 to $10 million. Legislative committees are expected to be assigned to study the need and funding source for an expanded housing trust fund over the next 18 months.
 
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Texas Grow Home
Housing Texas is co-sponsoring a competition to develop an attractive, expandable, modular, highly affordable single-family housing prototype that can be fabricated quickly and in large quantities in response to both natural disasters and the ongoing affordable housing shortage in Texas.
 
The purpose of the competition is to select three single-family housing designs.   The winning designs will be the basis for the production of full plans and specifications for the construction of the prototype homes.  Two of the core module prototypes (two bedrooms and one bathroom) will be built as individual homes and one core module with the additional one bedroom and bathroom module will also be constructed.
 
The house modules will be built in a public location using voluntary or contracted labor, publicly exhibited and then installed permanently on lots in Southeast Texas where the original homes were destroyed by Hurricane Rita.  The homes will be sold with interest free mortgage loans to low-income families whose homes were destroyed by the hurricane.
 
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National Housing Trust Fund
We are working with the National Low Income Housing Coalition to coordinate efforts in Texas to see that a National Housing Trust Fund to provide funding for affordable rental housing for the most needy citizens is enacted.
 
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Education
Decision makers, the public, and the media have a stale view of housing policy and programs. Most think of projects from earlier eras that foster outdated notions of what quality affordable homes look like today. Housing Texas is bringing into focus the solutions available to communities through the development of brochures and videos.
 
 
 
Accountability
Housing Texas works with UT Professor Elizabeth Mueller to develop a framework for measuring local progress. Grading focuses most strongly on the leadership and vision provided by city leaders, and their ability to dedicate resources to housing. Report cards will be released for San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, Austin and Houston by the end of 2006.
 
 
Consensus Building
Through meetings like the Hurricane Forum co-sponsored by Housing Texas in October  2005 at the State Capitol and at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center in 2006, the coalition hosts regional meetings as well as a statewide conference. Check our website for dates and attend these events to share best practices, give feedback on policy development, and network with like minded professionals from diverse perspectives.
 
<Learn about the 2005 Capitol Hurricane Forum
<Learn about the 2006 Forum on Texas’ hurricane housing needs
<Learn about the Texas Housing Forum
<Texas Housing Forum Common Ground Statement
 
 
 
 
A low-income family’s home in Port Arthur.  In need of replacement before the storm, it was ruined by Hurricane Rita.  Temporary housing is in the form of a FEMA trailer.  The Texas Grow Home Design Competition seeks to develop a better, permanent housing solution for current and future low-income disaster victims.
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