Fattah Announces $1.5 Million in Affordable Housing Grants for Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), a champion for affordable housing and mortgage foreclosure relief, will announce the award of $1.5 million in Affordable Housing Grants to nonprofit agencies to create 220 units in five Philadelphia neighborhoods.

The awards will be announced at a news conference Friday, February 4 at 11 a.m. at Community College of Philadelphia in the Winnet Student Life Building.

"Affordable housing and home ownership for middle class and lower-income Americans have been a priority throughout my public service from the Pennsylvania Legislature to Congress," Fattah said. "From tearing down public housing high-rise 'warehouses' to developing a new approach to mortgage foreclosure relief to awarding these grants to nonprofits, I have been dedicated to increasing access and availability of affordable housing in Philadelphia and across urban America."

The affordable housing grants that Fattah will announce on Friday come from longtime partner the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, assisted by Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania and PNC Bank. The new units will provide much-needed housing to seniors, the homeless, veterans, individuals recovering from substance abuse and victims of domestic violence.

The collaboration between Fattah and the Congressionally-chartered FHLBank of Pittsburgh has been a fruitful one for Philadelphia, culminating in a series of annual award announcements by the Congressman. Fattah has been a leading Congressional advocate for Affordable Housing programs by FHLBank/Pittsburgh. Other FHLBank units and Philadelphia-area banks have also partnered for affordable housing.

Over the past two decades, FHLBank/Pittsburgh has approved $57,221,461 in affordable housing programs and homebuyer grants in the City of Philadelphia, channeled toward creation of 3,458 housing units.

Announcing the FHLBank awards has been one of numerous results-oriented housing advocacy efforts by the nine-term Congressman.

In 2010, Fattah, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, created and guided to passage the Emergency Homeowners' Relief Fund, which was included in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama.

The program is patterned after the Pennsylvania Homeowners' Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP), which Fattah developed as a young state legislator in the 1980s. It will provide $1 billion in funds nationwide – including over $100 million in Pennsylvania -- to help millions of responsible American homeowners avoid foreclosure. Targeted to recently unemployed borrowers, the program will keep families in their homes and mitigate the effects of recession.

Fattah, almost two decades ago, proposed and championed the tear-down of Philadelphia's ugly and dangerous public housing high-rises. He advocated for and helped develop federal funding for thousands of units of affordable public housing on scattered sites that blended with and stabilized surrounding city neighborhoods.

Friday's announcement will feature Rep. Fattah; Sister Mary Scullion of Project H.O.M.E.; John Bendel of FHLBank/Pittsburgh; as well as housing, neighborhood, banking and nonprofit agency officials. The units to be developed will add to affordable housing stock in the neighborhoods of Francisville, Germantown, South Philadelphia, Tioga and West Philadelphia

SOURCE Office of Congressman Chaka Fattah

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