Real Estate Pros Laud New HUD Housing Development Assistance Plan

Wouldn’t life be easier if housing was located near transportation options? The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is offering $5 million worth of housing development assistance to local governments to add housing close to transportation hubs. The federal housing agency HUD is focused on adding housing and transportation options such as bike lanes, light rail, and main street revitalization in historically underserved communities. 

The program’s allotted money will hopefully support 30 to 35 cities during the first year. As a part of the Biden administration’s Thriving Communities effort, fiscal contributions have been obtained from eight federal agencies in the hopes of reviving economically distressed urban areas that have suffered past divestment. Alongside the housing assistance being offered by HUD, the Department of Transportation has also launched programs to assist underserved communities in obtaining grants created by Biden’s infrastructure investment act.

How are home real estate professionals reacting to the prospect of new housing assistance development programs and new transit-friendly housing? Garrett Maroon, a licensed real estate agent and team lead at Maroon Group Real Estate out of Virginia, expands further on the benefits of HUD locating homes closer to transportation hubs. 

Garrett’s Thoughts

“I think overall, HUD offering assistance to help improve transportation, but specifically for this, and HUD helping to improve with new construction or new communities, is highly valuable. Certainly, as we saw with the pandemic, as people started to move further and further away from where they worked, having access to housing that’s near transportation options I think is hugely valuable. But specifically what I like that HUD is doing is making it easier and streamlining the building process. 

We are far behind as a country in terms of how many units we need to be building, and how many homes we need to be building. Certainly, homes that are affordable as well. And so having that process streamlined is going to be highly valuable and continue to help us as our country continues to grow and grow in different areas than we did originally before COVID. So I think all of this is a very positive sign and hopefully, we’ll have really positive benefits.”

Article written by Kimberly Sharpe.