Advocacy
2024 State Advocacy Priorities
Find your Iowa state legislators here.
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​2024 State Advocacy Materials and Handouts:
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State Advocacy Priorities
1.
Promote Housing Preservation Programs
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Continued funding and support of the Housing Renewal Program. The Program is designed to renovate dilapidated, nuisance properties with substantial capital repairs for the health and safety the home. After repair, the home is sold to low- and moderate- income Iowans.
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The pilot program is currently renovating 5 homes across Iowa in rural and urban locations, with additional projects identified.
2.
Remove the Cap on State Housing Trust Fund
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Additional funding is needed for new construction, adaptive reuse and/or rehabilitation projects. •
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Housing Trust Funds help make housing projects feasible, especially in rural areas and on rehabilitation projects
3.
Down Payment Assistance Programs
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Down payment and closing costs continue to be one of the most common barriers low- and moderate-income families face when purchasing a home.
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Down payment assistance promotes affordable homeownership opportunities by helping low income Iowans access safe and affordable homes and build long-term saving habits.
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Ensure level funding at $2.2 million to the Military Down Payment Assistance Program.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.