The White House kicked off a multiagency push on Friday to help finance real-estate developers convert more office buildings in big cities emptied by the pandemic into affordable housing, taking aim at the nation’s housing crisis.

The initiative looks to harness an existing $35 billion in low-cost loans already available through the Transportation Department to fund housing developments near transit hubs, folding it into the Biden administration’s clean energy push.

It also opens up additional funding sources and tax incentives, offering a new guidebook to 20 different federal programs that can be tapped by developers and offers technical assistance in what can end up being tricky and expensive conversions.

A third peg of the program will see the federal government draw up a public list of buildings it owns that could be made available for sale to help bolster development.

“These downtowns and central business districts that we are taking about today often already designed and orientated around public transit,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a press briefing. “Our intention is to make the most of this opportunity to add more housing near transit in ways that not only reduces the cost of housing, but also often reduces the cost of transportation.”

    • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      How many will see this?

      How many saw the train workers getting the sick days and personal days they really wanted and needed after the contract was pushed through by congress?

      How many see the insulin cap and medication lowered for seniors?

      How many see the administration doing what they can for student loan forgiveness after being hamstrung by Republicans and the SCOTUS?

      So many good things the vast majority of the US population don’t see because they aren’t shoving it into their faces like they should.

      • blazera@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I have no idea how youre imagining only you saw these things, or that you’d be able to at all without the white house communicating all of it

      • dvoraqs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        People are biased toward seeing bad things more than good and even you are susceptible to it