WASHINGTON – On July 31, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo met with the leadership of the 11 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) and the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Sandra Thompson, to discuss what steps the FHLBs can take to better support the development of affordable housing.
During the meeting, Deputy Secretary Adeyemo urged the FHLBs to deploy more of the significant resources at their disposal to expand housing supply in service of their public mission. Specifically, Adeyemo called on FHLBs to spend at least 20% of their net income on affordable housing and to use a portion of their existing unrestricted retained earnings to create a pool of capital that can lower the cost of new housing production across the country.
Lowering costs for the American people is a top priority for the Biden-Harris Administration. Last week’s meeting builds on a months-long engagement by Treasury staff with the leadership of the FHLBs to address housing supply and affordability, and comes on the heels of Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s recent trip to Minneapolis where she outlined actions Treasury is taking to address housing affordability across the country, including a call to action for the FHLBs to increase their support for housing programs.
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