Housing finance / Development Financial Institutions
Affordable housing builders get a new grant path
The program would live inside Treasury’s CDFI Fund and carry $500 million a year through 2030. It also sets a four-year deadline for grantees to commit the money or risk having it recaptured.
Representative Shontel Brown’s bill creates a new housing fund for certified CDFIs and nonprofit groups that work on affordable homes. The grants are meant to keep units in service and help add more.
- New Treasury-run fund would target housing supply
- Certified CDFIs and affordable-housing nonprofits could apply
- Money is meant for development and preservation, not direct aid
- Consortia could apply together
- Housing groups that can build, renovate or keep units in service could get a new federal funding stream in Washington
Housing groups that can build, renovate or keep units in service could get a new federal funding stream in Washington. Representative Shontel Brown, an Ohio Democrat, has introduced the Housing Supply Fund Act of 2026 to create a Housing Supply Fund inside the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, or CDFI Fund, with the Secretary of the Treasury in charge.
The money would not go straight to households. It would go out as competitive grants, aimed at increasing investment in housing development and preservation.
Who could apply
The bill would open the door to certified community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, and to nonprofit organizations whose main purpose is creating, developing or preserving affordable housing. It also would allow consortia, so lenders and housing groups could apply together instead of separately.
That matters because some of the hardest housing projects to finance are the ones that fall between categories, like preservation work that is too small for conventional capital or development deals that need both lending expertise and housing-side know-how.
The supply-side bet
This is a bet on supply, not a direct household fix. The idea is that more capital for the organizations already working in housing could help add units, protect existing ones and keep affordable homes from slipping out of reach.
It does not claim to solve the shortage on its own. But it does point federal money toward the part of the market where new homes are financed, repaired and kept available, which is where a lot of affordability rises or falls.