Commissioners announce HUD housing agreement

Oakland County Board of Commissioners Chairman David T. Woodward (D-Royal Oak) and Finance Committee Chair Helaine Zack (D-Huntington Woods) are hailing a newly signed agreement between Oakland County and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a major step toward improving affordable housing options for low-income families in Oakland County.

“Access to affordable housing is a real challenge for many working families,” said Woodward. “The investment of millions in new rental and multi-family housing assistance programs over the next decade will improve affordable housing and address long-standing issues of inequality. This is a great step forward for Oakland County.”

Oakland County’s Community & Home Improvement Division will be tasked with working with local communities and developing new programs to ensure implementation of the new housing policies. 

Under the new agreement, Oakland County agrees to make numerous changes to existing housing plans and policies, including:

• Allocate at least 20% of annual federal housing grants to help low-income renters.

• Conduct targeted outreach to income-eligible residents, including in racially- or ethnically-concentrated areas of poverty in the process of preparing an Analysis to Fair Housing Choice for submittal to HUD to identify barriers to fair and affordable housing.

• Develop and adopt a Fair Housing Plan to establish goals and outcome measures toward meeting the housing needs of income eligible households.

“Prior to this agreement, Oakland County’s administration of federal housing program was almost entirely focused on single family homes,” said Zack, who beginning this year, serves as chair of the Oakland County Community Development Citizens Advisory Council that makes a recommendation on how all county federal housing dollars are spent. “With these changes, our housing policy will better meet the needs of our community and will provide more options for local communities to develop and redevelop affordable housing.

Local communities will now have greater flexibility to find creative and innovative solutions to meet the housing needs of the underserved low-income families of our county.”  

According to HUD, among households eligible for the CDBG and HOME federal funded housing assistance, over 75 percent of black households, 65 percent of Hispanic households, and more than half of Asian households are renters.

Woodward and Zack have long championed a change in county housing policy to include rental assistance, because excluding rental assistance from the county’s federal housing programs denies important resources to area minorities and other low-income residents.

The board unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the county executive and chairman of the board to execute an agreement with HUD that commits Oakland County to fund new rental assistance programs and establish new housing policies for the future. Woodward finalized the agreement Monday with his signature.
 

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