HOME now finances over 80,000 affordable rental and ownership homes annually . HOME is a block grant that works through states and localities . It is flexible in meeting local needs for both homeownership and rental housing. HOME may be used in the construction of new housing as well as the rehabilitation and preservation of existing housing. HOME serves families, the elderly, the disabled and the homeless.
HOME reaches genuinely low-income families and communities .
While HOME and Housing Credits work very well, there are limits to what they can do. First, it is very difficult to build rental housing for extremely low-income tenants without some kind of rental subsidy. These tenants cannot generally afford to pay enough rent to support the cost of operating a property. Such subsidies are seldom available in conjunction with housing production. It is precisely these communities that need new and rehabilitated mixed-income housing as part of a community revitalization program.