HOME Investment Partnerships Program

The HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) is a type of United States federal assistance provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to States in order to provide decent and affordable housing, particularly housing for low- and very low-income Americans. It is the largest Federal block grant to States and local governments designed exclusively to create affordable housing for low-income families, providing approximately US$2 billion each year.

The program is commonly referred to as the Home Investment or Home Partnership Program, and is often operating in conjunction with other housing and other urban development programs, such as the CDBG program. Its federal identification number, or CFDA number, is 14.239.

The HOME program was designed and implemented in order to increase the amount of affordable housing in the United States for its citizens, especially for those that are below the national and State poverty guidelines. It was designed with four main objectives in mind:

HOME funds can be used in a broad range of eligible activities, all with the general purpose of providing affordable housing. Nevertheless, HUD has specified certain eligible activities which all governments can perform in order to achieve the objectives listed above:

Among these eligible activities, HUD has specified that governments can use funds to carry out “other reasonable and necessary expenses related to the development of non-luxury housing.”

The final recipients, otherwise known as beneficiaries (e.g. citizens), must be, for the most part, low-income families. HUD has designed a general formula for which all governments must comply with when providing HOME funds to citizens, which is that the incomes of families receiving HOME assistance or funds in a specific area (city, county, etc.) must not exceed 80 percent of the area’s family income median or average. In other words, if say HUD determines that a local area’s median income is $25,000, then the HOME funds awarded in that area should only benefit those families with incomes less than, or equal to, 80% of $25,000 (or $20,000). HUD publishes the area median incomes plus the 80% income limits every year in its website.

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