Created by Congress as part of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1987, the Nehemiah Housing Opportunities Grant Program has three primary goals:

• to increase homeownership among low- and moderate-income households,
• to improve neighborhoods in cities across the country, and
• to increase employment in those neighborhoods.
The program was modeled after a large, single-family homeownership project sponsored by the East Brooklyn Churches in a devastated section of Brooklyn, New York. That project produced 1,250 homes for low-income homebuyers at an average cost ofless than $70,000 per home. The unit~ were made affordable to purchasers in part through $10,000 deferred-payment loans from the City of New York. The national program offers competitively-selected nonprofit organizations federal funding of up to $15,000 per unit, which is used to provide interest-free second mortgage loans to first-time, low- and moderate-income homebuyers. These funds are available to the nonprofit sponsor only after a sales closing. No federal funds are provided under the program for acquisition or development.

This report is part of the collection of scanned historical documents available to the public.