The HOME Investment Partnerships Program was created by the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 ( P.L. 101-625 ). HOME is a federal block grant program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that provides funding for affordable housing activities to states and certain localities through formula grants. States and localities that receive HOME grants can choose to fund a wide range of rental and homeownership housing activities that benefit low-income households in order to best meet local affordable housing needs. This report provides an introduction to the HOME program, including a brief history, an overview of allowable uses of HOME funds, and a description of certain program requirements. It also provides information on funding for the program and how that funding has been used. In the late 1980s, some members of Congress expressed concern about the state of the nation's housing. This concern stemmed from an increasing awareness of a variety of problems related to housing, including homelessness, families living in sub-standard housing, and decreasing opportunities for homeownership. The concern over these issues led to a number of efforts to focus attention on housing policy, including the creation of a National Housing Task Force that included housing policy experts and industry leaders. In March 1988, the task force produced a report on its findings. Among the housing issues that the task force report identified was a diminishing supply of rental and homeownership housing that was affordable to low-income households. In a 1988 hearing on the task force report, some members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs suggested that federal funding for housing programs was inadequate to meet the affordable housing needs identified in the report. Most federal housing assistance distributed to states and localities at the time was restricted to specific uses, such as Section 8 vouchers or Public Housing projects. Furthermore, programs that did give communities flexibility to choose how to use their funds, such as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, were primarily meant to fund economic development and community revitalization activities and restricted the ways in which funding could be used for affordable housing (for example, CDBG funds could be used for some housing rehabilitation but could not generally be used to construct new housing units). Concerned that existing programs were not meeting the nation's affordable housing needs, members of the Housing Task Force argued to the committee that the level of federal funding specifically dedicated to affordable housing should be increased in order to fully address affordable housing issues. At the same time, task force members argued that local jurisdictions should be allowed more control over the ways in which they used any such federal affordable housing funding. In 1990, Congress passed a major housing bill that responded to some of the issues raised by the Housing Task Force and other experts. The Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act ( P.L. 101-625 ), or NAHA, stated that the nation's housing policy was not meeting the goal of providing "decent, safe, sanitary, and affordable living environments for all Americans" that was first set out in the Housing Act of 1949. The law revised, amended, or repealed several existing housing programs and authorized some new programs, including the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (often just referred to as HOME). HOME is the largest federal block grant program that provides funding dedicated exclusively to increasing the availability of adequate, affordable housing for low-and very low-income households. The program places a particular emphasis on giving states and localities flexibility in how they achieve their affordable housing goals, and funds can be used for a variety of activities related to both rental and owner-occupied housing. HOME is also designed to expand the capacity of states and localities to meet their long-term affordable housing needs by leveraging federal funding to attract state, local, and private investment in affordable housing and by strengthening the ability of government and nonprofit organizations to meet local housing needs. HOME is authorized by Title II of NAHA. HUD promulgated regulations governing the program in September 1996. In July 2013, HUD issued a final rule making significant revisions to certain program requirements, representing the first substantive changes to the regulations since they were first finalized in 1996. This section of the report describes the structure of the HOME program, including the requirements that states and localities must meet in order to receive their own allocations of HOME funds, eligible uses of program funds, and certain requirements that HOME-assisted housing must meet. The following section on " HOME Program Funding " describes the funding for the program, including appropriations for HOME and the funding formula that is used to allocate the funds to states and eligible localities. Each fiscal year, Congress appropriates funding to HUD for the HOME program during the annual appropriations process. HUD then uses a formula to allocate 40% of the funds to states and the remaining 60% to eligible localities. (This is discussed in more detail in the " HOME Program Funding " section of this report.) States and localities that meet certain requirements to receive their own allocations of HOME funds are referred to as "participating jurisdictions" (PJs). States are automatically eligible to become PJs and receive the greater of their formula grant amount or $3 million annually. Localities can only become PJs if they are metropolitan cities or urban counties, and if they meet two funding thresholds. First, localities must be eligible for a minimum amount of funding under the formula, usually $500,000. Once localities meet this threshold, they must also meet a second threshold: localities must dedicate a total of at least $750,000 to affordable housing activities, either by having a HOME formula grant of at least $750,000 or by making up the difference between their grant amount and the $750,000 threshold with their own funds or HOME funds provided by the state from the state's formula allocation. Localities that do not meet the requirements to become participating jurisdictions may join with other contiguous localities to form consortia in order to reach the minimum funding thresholds. Localities that are not PJs can also participate in the HOME program by applying to their home state to receive a portion of the state's allocation of HOME funds. States in which no locality receives its own allocation of HOME funding have their grant amounts increased by $500,000. A state or locality that is otherwise eligible to receive HOME funds must submit a document describing how it plans to use HOME funds to meet its affordable housing needs for HUD's approval before it can become a PJ. (This document, called a Consolidated Plan, is described in more detail in the following subsection.) Once a state or locality has been designated a PJ, it remains one – and therefore continues to be eligible to receive its own allocation of HOME funds – unless its designation is revoked by the Secretary of HUD. The Secretary has the authority to revoke a jurisdiction's designation if he finds that the jurisdiction is not complying with program requirements, or if a locality's formula grant amount falls below certain thresholds over a specified period of time, although he is not required to do so. A participating jurisdiction can administer HOME funds itself, or it can designate a public agency or nonprofit organization to administer all or part of the HOME program on its behalf. Such an organization is referred to as a subrecipient. Participating jurisdictions or their subrecipients can distribute funds to a variety of organizations to undertake specific projects. These organizations can include developers, owners, and sponsors of affordable housing, Community Housing Development Organizations (CHDOs), private lenders, faith-based organizations, and third-party contractors. In order to receive HOME funding, a state or locality must submit a Consolidated Plan to HUD for approval. The Consolidated Plan covers a three- to five-year period and includes a detailed description of the jurisdiction's housing needs and an explanation of how it will use HOME funding and funding from three other HUD block grant programs to meet its specific housing needs. The Consolidated Plan also describes how the jurisdiction will leverage HOME funds to attract local, private, nonprofit, or other non-federal sources of funds for affordable housing, and it prioritizes projects by type and geographic location. While many activities are eligible uses of HOME dollars, participating jurisdictions must specify in their Consolidated Plan which activities they intend to fund. As part of the consolidated planning process, PJs submit annual Action Plans that describe the specific activities that a PJ plans to undertake during the year to address its housing needs and make progress towards the goals that are included in its Consolidated Plan. PJs also submit annual performance reports on their use of funds and their progress towards their goals. The Consolidated Plan is meant to be the product of "a participatory process among citizens, organizations, businesses, and other stakeholders" in a community. The HOME regulations stress community participation, especially by low- and moderate-income individuals, in developing the Consolidated Plan, and jurisdictions must submit a "citizen participation plan" that describes how citizens have been included and consulted in the process. In 2012, HUD implemented certain changes to the Consolidated Planning process. Specifically, HUD began providing additional data and mapping tools for PJs to utilize for planning purposes. The public can also access these data and mapping tools, which is intended to enable the community to be a more informed part of the consolidated planning process. Furthermore, HUD now requires Consolidated Plans to be submitted through a standardized template in the Integrated Disbursement & Information System (IDIS), the computer system into which PJs report their activities and uses of HOME funds. According to HUD, the new data are expected to help PJs produce better Consolidated Plans that more fully reflect local needs and to increase public participation in the process. The ability to submit plans directly to IDIS through a standard template is expected to make it easier for PJs to produce and submit Consolidated Plans, and to make it easier for HUD to track PJs' progress toward the goals that they include in their plans.