FY24 Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing) | FR 6800 N 98

Opportunity Information: Apply for FR 6800 N 98

The FY24 Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing) grant is a competitive funding opportunity from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) designed to help communities tackle the local rules, processes, and conditions that make it hard to build, preserve, or access affordable housing. The program is rooted in the reality that housing production has not kept up with demand in many places, including both urban and rural areas and especially in higher-opportunity neighborhoods where jobs, schools, transportation, and services are stronger. PRO Housing is meant for communities that are not only describing the problem, but are actively taking steps to remove barriers and create long-term conditions for more housing supply and lower housing costs.

HUD frames the problem in practical, on-the-ground terms: barriers can include restrictive zoning and land use rules, complicated or discretionary approvals, lengthy or expensive permitting, and inadequate or deteriorating infrastructure that limits where housing can be built. Barriers can also be political and social, such as neighborhood opposition to new housing or to affordable housing specifically. On the preservation side, HUD highlights threats like redevelopment that removes affordable units, displacement pressures, affordability restrictions expiring, and growing risks from natural hazards and extreme weather interacting with an aging housing stock. The intent is to support strategies that address both production (building more units) and preservation (keeping existing affordable units available and habitable).

The opportunity is also strongly motivated by the scale of the affordability crisis. HUD cites 2021 American Community Survey estimates showing 39.3 million households are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of income on housing (20.9 million renters and 18.4 million homeowners). HUD emphasizes that these burdens fall disproportionately on underserved populations. The description calls out that Black families face affordability challenges at especially high rates, with many spending roughly 30 to 50 percent of their income on housing, and that in Puerto Rico the situation can be even more severe, with cost-burdened households spending an estimated 50 to 90 percent of income on housing. HUD links these conditions to broader impacts like reduced access to opportunity, weakened ability to build generational wealth, higher eviction risk, and greater likelihood of homelessness for low-income households.

This FY24 round is the second time HUD is running PRO Housing as a national competition. HUD notes the first round was heavily oversubscribed: for every dollar available in FY23, about thirteen dollars were requested, with more than 150 applications from nearly every state and territory. In 2024, HUD awarded the inaugural PRO Housing grants to 21 winners across 19 states and Washington, DC, spanning rural, suburban, and urban communities of widely varying size. By highlighting that demand, HUD is signaling that competition will likely be intense again and that well-documented need plus credible readiness to act will matter.

Funding for this round comes from the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (Public Law 118-42), which set aside $100 million for competitive grants focused on identifying and removing barriers to affordable housing production and preservation. Congress directed HUD to run the competition using the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) statutory and regulatory framework. In practice, that means PRO Housing operates with CDBG-style requirements and priorities, including a central emphasis on serving low- and moderate-income people and aligning activities with planning and accountability structures familiar to CDBG grantees.

Eligible applicants include state governments and local governments (including county and city/township governments), metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and multijurisdictional entities. HUD explicitly encourages jurisdictions with overlapping geographies, such as a city within a county, to collaborate on a single application rather than competing against each other with separate proposals. Individuals, foreign entities, and sole proprietorships are not eligible to apply or receive awards.

PRO Housing funds can be used to develop, evaluate, and implement housing policy plans and local housing strategies, and to take actions that directly facilitate affordable housing production and preservation. The program description signals a broad range of possible activities, often grouped into planning, infrastructure, development, and preservation actions, as long as they are clearly tied to removing barriers. HUD also encourages applicants to address land-use regulations, permitting practices, and procedural issues that slow down or block housing, and to show how proposed changes will translate into real outcomes such as more units produced, affordability preserved, timelines shortened, costs reduced, or displacement prevented.

HUD lays out six core goals for the competition. These include awarding funds fairly and effectively; elevating and enabling promising practices that remove barriers while preventing displacement; institutionalizing state and local capacity to analyze barriers and implement effective, equitable, and resilient housing approaches; providing technical assistance so communities can better meet the Consolidated Plan requirement to identify and address barriers to affordable housing; affirmatively furthering fair housing by removing barriers that perpetuate segregation or restrict access to high-opportunity neighborhoods for protected class groups and other vulnerable populations; and fostering collaboration and innovation among jurisdictions, researchers, advocates, and other stakeholders.

In terms of how HUD will prioritize applications, the NOFO emphasizes two main signals of competitiveness. First, applicants are favored if they can demonstrate progress and a real commitment to overcoming barriers, especially by pointing to enacted improvements in laws, policies, or regulations that HUD can reasonably expect to produce or preserve housing units. Second, HUD prioritizes communities with acute need for housing affordable to households below 100 percent of area median income (AMI). Beyond those two anchors, HUD places added weight on proposals that remove barriers in ways that affirmatively further fair housing, such as expanding affordable housing access in well-resourced, high-opportunity areas for protected class groups who have historically been denied that access. HUD also highlights priorities like promoting desegregation, deconcentrating affordable housing to increase housing choice, locating affordable and accessible housing near transit and services, strengthening resilience to natural and environmental hazards, and incorporating meaningful community input and stakeholder engagement.

A major compliance and program design thread throughout PRO Housing is the requirement to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH). HUD describes this as more than simply avoiding discrimination; it requires meaningful actions to overcome patterns of segregation and reduce disparities in housing needs and access to opportunity. In HUDs framing, this includes steps that help move from segregated patterns toward integrated and balanced living patterns, help transform racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, and maintain compliance with civil rights and fair housing laws. Applicants should therefore expect that competitive proposals will connect barrier removal efforts not only to unit counts and affordability, but also to equity outcomes and access to opportunity.

Key logistics from the posted opportunity include that it is a discretionary grant under Assistance Listing (CFDA) 14.023, with an application deadline of October 15, 2024. HUD anticipates making around 30 awards, with an award ceiling of $7,000,000 per grantee. The overall message of the NOFO is that HUD is looking for places that can show they understand their local housing constraints in specific terms, have begun changing the policies or systems that cause those constraints, and have a practical plan to use federal funds to accelerate production and preservation of affordable housing while advancing fair housing and limiting displacement.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development in the community development, housing sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "FY24 Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing (PRO Housing)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 14.023.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-08-13.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-10-15. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $7,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 30 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Others.

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