Keystone Crossroads: Fixing federal financing for Main Street buildings

Jon Geeting

June 15, 2016

Back in March, we covered a report from the Regional Plan Association entitled “The Unintended Consequences of Housing Finance,” which makes the case that federal housing finance rules are impractical for financing the types of three and four-story mixed-use buildings that are common in older urban downtowns.

At a session at the recent Congress for the New Urbanism conference, federal officials from Freddie Mac and HUD signaled they’re aware of those issues, and discussed some recent steps they’ve taken to address them.

Richard Oram of the Oram Foundation, who funded the RPA report and has made this his pet issue for the last three years, organized the session, bringing in Kelly Brady and Corey Aber of Freddie Mac to discuss some recent movement at the federal level with the development wonks at the conference.

Read full story on Keystone Crossroads.

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