Yellen announces $100M affordable housing fund as housing costs weigh on Biden

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is launching a series of funding initiatives to support new housing development, including a $100 million affordable housing fund.
The announcement comes as Yellen meets with housing officials and CEOs in Minnesota, part of a broader administration-wide effort to tout President Biden’s economic agenda.
Inflation will likely be a key economic theme in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election between Biden and Donald Trump this week.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday unveiled a new round of funding initiatives to support housing development, including a $100 million fund specifically for affordable housing.

The announcement comes days before President Joe Biden faces former President Donald Trump in the first presidential debate, where inflation will likely be a key point of contention.

The latest inflation reports showed a slight slowdown in prices, but housing costs remained consistently high. The June consumer price index showed that headline inflation remained stable in May, although housing inflation rose 0.4%.

As part of its new actions, Treasury will provide $100 million over the next three years to fund affordable housing projects. It also calls on several agencies that help finance housing to step up their support for new developments.

Yellen will deliver an official speech on housing initiatives in Minneapolis later Monday. The speech is part of a tour of Minnesota, where she is having lunch with CEOs and holding roundtable discussions with state housing officials.

As the president travels to Camp David to prepare for Thursday’s debate, Yellen is among a large number of Biden Cabinet members touring the country in an effort to promote the president’s economic agenda.

Acting Housing and Urban Development Secretary Adrianne Todman and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for example, have traveled across the country touting Biden’s infrastructure investments.

The economy has proven to be a major sticking point for Biden among voters since the race for the White House shifted into high gear.

Due to pandemic-related supply chain blockages and labor shortages, the record inflation that followed lingers for consumers, who still feel crushed by rising prices. Polls show that many of them blame the president who has been in power through all of this.

Housing costs in particular, which account for one of the largest shares of consumer spending, have remained stubbornly high even as other sectors have cooled.

Biden has tried to shift the blame for high housing costs onto corporate landlords, accusing them of “hiking rents,” keeping consumers’ rents artificially high even as their own costs have fallen.

“People are tired of being played for fools,” Biden said in March. “And I’m tired of letting them play for fools.”