The Federal Home Loan Bank of New York (“FHLBNY”) announced the publication of its 2021 Targeted Community Lending Plan and the Affordable Housing Program Implementation Plan. These two documents describe important improvements to the core Community Investment programs offered through the FHLBNY’s members for 2021, and both are now available on the FHLBNY’s website.
“Our Community Investment programs allow the FHLBNY to act on our housing mission and provide support to our members and housing partners as they meet the needs of the communities we all serve,” said José R. González, president and CEO of the FHLBNY. “The enhancements we have made to these programs for 2021 reflect feedback from these members and housing partners, and better position our cooperative to respond to our District’s needs.”
The FHLBNY’s Affordable Housing Program General Fund, through which the FHLBNY awarded $38.4 million to 47 rental and owner-occupied projects in 2020, will, as of January 1, 2021, be in full compliance with a new regulation issued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In part, this regulation provides the FHLBNY additional flexibility to define scoring criteria that reflect the District’s highest priority needs. One change of note is the introduction of a category to reward projects that have some degree of financial participation from an FHLBNY member. Project sponsors may begin consulting the new criteria to help them plan applications for the 2021 program round, and the FHLBNY will offer remote training opportunities beginning in February 2021.
The FHLBNY will also make updates to its Homebuyer Dream Program® (“HDP”), which supports members’ lending to low- and moderate-income first-time homebuyers. The maximum grant amount available under the HDP is now up to $10,000, which includes up to $500 to defray the cost of homeownership counseling. Additionally, the HDP will return to the previous practice of allocating program funds to participating members so they may identify borrowers most in need of down-payment and closing-cost assistance, in place of the first-come/first-served approach to reviewing households’ applications for grant funding utilized in the 2020 HDP round. The FHLBNY will provide additional details and training in the coming months.
Lastly, members will see a simplified approach to determining their borrowing capacity under the Community Lending Programs, through which they can take advances to fund their lending for affordable housing and community development. Each member may borrow these discounted advances up to the greater of $25 million or three percent of assets, to a maximum of $100 million, given program availability. The FHLBNY will issue a commitment of program funds to a member for a period of up to 90 days.
Subject to developing circumstances, members will continue to have access to the Disaster Relief Funding advances, which were made available in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Members are encouraged to contact their Relationship Manager to discuss their borrowing capacity and further program rules and requirements.
To learn more about these important updates, please register to attend the FHLBNY’s Community Investment webinar, which will be held on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, at 11:00 AM ET.
