Advocacy
2025 State Advocacy Priorities
Find your Iowa state legislators here.
2025 State Advocacy Materials and Handouts:
State Advocacy Priorities
1.
Help Iowans Preserve their Financial Legacy - Transfer on Death Deeds
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Homeownership is the #1 way Americans build wealth for their families. Iowa lags behind other
states in adopting the Real Property Transfer on Death Act. -
Iowans are subject to unnecessary time and expense of probate, wills, or trusts to transfer their
home to family. -
Transfer on Death Deeds help average Iowans have a clear and private plan to choose freely
whom to leave their home.
2.
Increase Supply and Preservation of Decent Housing
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Continued funding and support of the Housing Renewal Program - The Program helps
communities acquire and rehabilitate problem properties. Properties received a minimum of
$25,000 worth of health and safety improvements and are sold to income eligible buyers (up to
120% AMI). -
Remove the Cap on State Housing Trust Fund to provide additional funding for new
construction, adaptive reuse and/or rehabilitation projects. -
Workforce Housing Tax Credits – Habitat for Humanity supports an expansion of the Workforce
Housing Tax Credit program to accelerate building housing units.
3.
Help Make Housing Affordable for All Iowans
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Property Tax and Insurance - Monitor proposed property tax changes and the insurance
environment to identify possible relief measures for Iowans. -
Down Payment Assistance Programs - Down payment assistance promotes affordable
homeownership opportunities by helping Iowans access safe and affordable homes and build
long-term saving habits.
Habitat International's
National priorities for housing investment
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Support policies and programs that increase the supply of affordable homes, spark the revitalization of left-behind neighborhoods and help low-income families and communities of color rebuild and prosper.
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Prioritize policies that ensure that access to safe, healthy and affordable housing is equitable by rectifying legacies of systemic housing discrimination, closing racial gaps in homeownership and ensuring communities of opportunity for all.
Habitat is committed to continuing its housing advocacy through working with elected officials at all levels of government to find and implement policy solutions that will enable access to affordable homes for 10 million people in the U.S. over the course of the five-year Cost of Home campaign.
Cost of Home Campaign
Cost of Home is a five-year advocacy campaign through which local Habitat organizations, partners, volunteers and community members across the country are working together so that 10 million people have access to an affordable home.
Cost of Home has already helped more than 4 million people access decent housing through our advocacy to influence policies at the local, state and federal level. But we haven’t reached our goal — yet. That’s why we need you to join Habitat Internation.
Families all across the United States are paying too high a price to cover the cost of home.
Everywhere you look — cities, suburbs, rural areas — the stability that home should bring remains out of reach for far too many families.
At Habitat for Humanity, we know that a family should never have to spend more than 30% of their income on a home. But consider that even before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 17 million U.S. households were paying half or more of their income on a place to live. Now, as the significant economic impacts of COVID-19 continue to unfold, the number of families struggling to make ends meet is only growing.
Together, we can make the cost of home something we all can afford.
Through our five-year Cost of Home campaign, we commit to mobilizing our local Habitat organizations, our partners, our volunteers and community members across the country to find the solutions and help create the policies that will allow 10 million individuals to meet their most basic needs.