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For those who were unaware, the American Affordable
Housing Institute at Rutgers University no longer exists.
The Bloustein School of Public Affairs, of which AAHI
was part, has agreed to refer people looking for
information about employer-assisted housing to my
personal site which will continue to be updated. As the
former Research Director at AAHI when the Institute was
engaged in employer-assisted housing research and
technical assistance activities, I hope that this site can be
of help to you.
During April Dan addressed meetings convened by the
Mercer County Regional Chamber of Commerce and the
Mercer County Workforce Investment Board. At both
meetings Dan focused on the growing employer sensitivity
to the issue of recruiting and retaining needed workers, even
in slow economic times.
Citing recently released national survey data gathered by
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., Dan told these audiences
that 44% of employers expected the competition for talent to
increase during the next 18 months with the same
percentage of employers expecting competition to remain
the same. In the same study 55% of employers said that
they said that a prime focus of their benefit strategies would
be to retain employees and half of employers said that the
focus would be on offering cost controllable benefits.
In response to this data, Dan explained to the Workforce
Investment Board and Chamber audiences that housing
benefits were uniquely suited to meet these employer
objectives in that unlike more familiar benefits, employers
have greater control in deciding how and how much to
spend on housing benefits, including offering benefits that
require no cash expenditures and/or can make money for
the employer. Moreover, the public sector and private
vendors are often willing to share the cost of a benefit, or
provide additional value in return for being part of a housing
benefit program, unlike other benefits where the employer
and/or employee pay all benefit costs.
The Met Life study also indicated that while less important to
families than health coverage, 43% of single employees and
49% of young families noted that saving money to buy a
home was a major concern. This finding creates a great
opportunity to work with employees, as well as the public
sector and shelter industries to create housing benefit
programs that enable employers to provide a valuable
benefit that is of great interest to many employees.
Please take a few minutes to provide some feedback on
Employer-Assisted Housing. Thanks! Click here.
Housing America’s Workforce Act
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) has re-introduced the
Housing America’s Workforce Act, which proposes the
creation of a federal tax employer credit to support
employer-assisted housing programs. The bill has been
assigned bill number S. 1078.
The legislation is essentially identical to the legislation
that Senator Clinton introduced during the last session of
Congress. Co-sponsoring the legislation are Senators
Martinez (R-FL), Kennedy (D-Mass), Durbin (D-Ill.),
Lieberman (Ind.-D- Conn.), Reed (D-R.I.) and Smith (R-
Ore).
Introduction of the bill will keep the issue of federal
support for employer-assisted housing before Congress.
The bill has been assigned to the Senate Finance
Committee, on which neither Senator Clinton nor any of
the other co-sponsoring Democrats serve. This is likely to
make it more difficult to get the bill on the Committee’s
agenda. Senator Smith serves on this Committee among
Republican co-sponsors. Also complicating prospects for
the bill is a lack of Administration support and the
likelihood that this bill would only reach the floor as part of
larger tax reform legislation, also not the immediate
Congressional or Administration agenda.
For those interested in advocating on behalf of this bill I
am urging that requests be made of the Finance
Committee to hold a hearing on the bill. This would serve
to familiarize Finance Committee members with employer-
assisted housing and provide a forum for amending the
legislation. Among the amendments I am urging are ones
that would:
• Enable employers to work through nonprofit
organizations and other third-party administrators. This is
a key element of several enacted and introduced state
proposals supporting employer-assisted housing, and the
absence of this feature will make it difficult for employers
to participate in a federal and state program those states.
• Increase the amount of money an employer could
provide and still receive tax credit support. This is
particularly important in expensive markets and to support
rental housing development and preservation.
• Permit a greater variety of eligible ways for employers
to offer assistance.
• Enable organized labor to participate via Taft-Hartley
trusts by making employer contributions to a housing trust
eligible for the credit.
• Make other technical changes to revise or eliminate
the household income standard and substitute a strong
employee income standard. This will enable employers to
better understand and predict who can be helped since
employers don’t know anything about household incomes,
but know a lot about employee incomes. This predictability
will encourage more employer participation.
Representative Nydia Valazquez has introduced
companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
“Where the Jobs Go to Sleep At Night” was the title of a
session Dan addressed at the Governor’s Housing
Summit, sponsored by the New Mexico Mortgage Finance
Authority on November 16, 2006. Dan told conference
attendees that employer-assisted housing could be more
than a boutique housing strategy that a few institutional
employers adopted and that with state encouragement
could be a cornerstone of state affordable housing policy.
Dan reviewed some of his experiences with building
employer-based housing partnerships in which different
types and sizes of employers are acquainted with the
concept of employer-assisted housing and provided
access to readily accessible housing benefit products that
enable employers to efficiently adopt, customize and
manage housing benefit programs. By creating employer
led housing partnerships communities are able to interest
many employers in offering housing benefit programs and
in so doing create a critical mass of employers and benefit
eligible employees so as to impact upon local housing
affordability and/or availability problems. Dan also noted
that in a time of tight public sector budgets, employer-
assisted housing can be a very economical way of
delivering a variety of housing services.
Find out how your community can create an effective EAH
Housing Strategy--contact Dan Hoffman at this website.
