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Bringing New Orleans Families Home – Program Announcement

I'm here to announce that Freddie Mac is stepping our commitment to New Orleans.

We are investing an additional $5 million from Freddie Mac and our Foundation. These funds will support the rebuilding of housing, as well as families, that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. With our partners here today – who have on-the-ground experience – these efforts will help the most needy in the city. Namely, those who had relied on public housing.

Let me get into the details.

First, Freddie Mac will contribute $2 million to help renovate storm-damaged properties. Our initial investment will go to the New Orleans chapter of Rebuilding Together. Now they will be able to repair more storm-damaged properties, recruit more AmeriCorps volunteers to help returning families, and even put to work another labor force: Freddie Mac volunteers.

We look forward to making additional investments so that more families can have strong, safe properties to live in.

Of course, good properties merely represent a house or apartment. You need more to truly call any place a "home." Such as access to health care, job training, transportation, and more. We refer to these as "resident services" because they help families with their immediate needs, and then put them on the road to self-sufficiency.

And that's the focus of our second contribution: $3 million from the Freddie Mac Foundation to provide resident services in many developments. Through these grants, we will support the work of Enterprise Community Partners, Catholic Charities, and Providence Community Housing.

Currently, these organizations are developing a new, mixed-income community in the Treme neighborhood. And they are working to provide replacement housing for all former residents of the Lafitte apartments.

Our Foundation will augment these terrific efforts. With our dollars, more than 300 returning families will have access to resident services such as food and clothing, academic enrichment, and job training.

We also will support another important effort led by the National Housing Partnership. And that is, rebuilding the very site we are standing on today. This site, the Forest Park Apartments, was hit hard by Katrina, displacing all of the families living here. Today, NHP is rebuilding this property, as well as two others nearby. Efforts that will provide quality, affordable housing units for roughly 900 families living in the upper Ninth Ward.

With Freddie's grant, NHP also will provide resident services, such as pre-K and after-school programs, as well as health and wellness programs that are conducted on site. So rather than being known for damage and destruction, this site will become a thriving community, and be an ongoing display of the power of volunteerism in this area.

Better housing and better resident services. That's the magic combination to restoring the magic here in New Orleans.

Now, the actions I have announced today really build on a broader level of Katrina-related support that Freddie Mac and the Freddie Mac Foundation has provided to this area. To date, we've provided more than $16 million in humanitarian assistance. As well as mortgage relief for many, many borrowers – our most comprehensive relief ever. And new investments that have financed low-cost mortgages for 10,000 families.

Through Freddie Mac and our partners, we can create a larger supply of quality, affordable housing, as well as the resident services needed in times of transition. And the contributions we are announcing today further these causes.

So on behalf of all of us, let's get to work today, so we can say "Welcome Home" to more families tomorrow.