“Senator Sanders is proud to have authored the original National Affordable Housing Trust Fund bill in the House of Representatives in 2001 that became law in 2008. This is the first new federal housing production program in almost three decades, and the first ever designed to build rental housing for extremely low-income households,”

Expanding the NHTF, Senator Sanders says, will not only help address the affordable housing crisis, “it will also create millions of good paying jobs in the process.”

https://nlihc.org/resource/senator-bernie-sanders-releases-plan-address-affordable-housing-crisis

Sanders first introduced legislation to create the National Housing Trust Fund in 2001, based largely on the success of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Trust Fund. After a 15-year effort, in 2016, the National Housing Trust Fund became the first new federal affordable housing program in several decades.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, more than 8.1 million extremely low-income households, including more than 10,500 in Vermont, spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities. “When you spend half of your money on rent, that leaves very little for other necessities such as food and medicine,” Sanders said.

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-announces-continuation-of-affordable-housing-funding