Capacity Building: Supporting Housing Development Infrastructure

Tribal Nations Program

In January 2024, the Bank launched a new $1 million Tribal Nations Program that provides critically necessary infrastructure funding to increase the supply of affordable housing for Native American communities. 

For this initiative, the California Coalition for Rural Housing will partner with the Arizona Housing Coalition, the Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority and Pala Housing Resource Center in California, and with the Nevada Housing Coalition to deliver resources to meet the infrastructure development goals of the Tribal Nations Program. Funding will support capacity building efforts and delivery of technical assistance designed to help tribal organizations submit competitive applications for funding from the Bank's Affordable Housing Program (AHP), as well as for Low Income Housing Tax Credits and other federal, state, and local housing and community programs.  In addition, funding is available to tribal organizations through November 29, 2024 for affordable housing predevelopment, construction, and rehabilitation. Member financial institutions wishing to participate in the 2024 Tribal Nations Program can complete and submit a Certification and Disbursement Request and Budget.  

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), approximately 15% of Native populations live with overcrowding, compared with the national average of 2%. Emphasizing the need for more affordable housing, HUD research estimates 68,000 additional units are needed to replace severely inadequate units and eliminate overcrowding on Native American Tribal lands.

The $1 million Tribal Nations Program builds on the Bank's ongoing support for affordable housing and economic development projects benefiting Native American communities, including, to date, over $20 million in grants from AHP projects that have created more than 1,600 affordable housing units for tribal communities and more than $1.1 million in AHEAD grants awarded to 32 economic development projects. 

Nevada Capacity Building Grants

FHLBank San Francisco supports the nonprofit Nevada Housing Coalition (which FHLBank San Francisco helped create with early-stage funding) in its ongoing efforts to build overall capacity for affordable housing development in Nevada.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Nevada tops the national list as the state with the highest percentage (21%) of extremely low-income households earning 0% to 30% of area median income who are severely cost burdened, meaning the household spends more than 50% of its income on housing costs, including utilities. 

In 2022, we awarded a $500,000 grant to the Nevada Housing Coalition, a state-wide nonprofit working to address Nevada’s extreme lack of affordable housing, along with the state’s limited infrastructure for its future development. In 2023 we granted an additional $350,000 to support NHC’s important work. 

Nevada Housing Coalition's overarching goals are to build up development resources in the state, grow its affordable housing ecosystem, and better position Nevada to secure and deploy affordable housing dollars from a variety of existing and new sources, including our AHP. Consistent with specific regional needs identified in FHLBank San Francisco’s Targeted Community Lending Plan, the Coalition’s capacity building efforts include delivering critical training to practitioners on the nuances of securing and applying for affordable housing dollars, increasing the state’s affordable housing project pipeline, and ultimately ensuring more housing options for all Nevadans.

The work of the Coalition began seeing results in the summer of 2023 when six Nevada affordable housing projects submitted successful applications for a total of $4.8 million in the inaugural competition for grants from our AHP Nevada Targeted Fund. In 2024, our Nevada Targeted Fund awarded $9.4 million to six Nevada projects that will create or rehabilitate over 600 units of affordable housing throughout the state.

FHLBank San Francisco created its state-targeted AHP fund, the first of its kind in the FHLBank System, through collaboration with Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto to accelerate solutions to Nevada’s housing shortage.