Making Homeownership Affordable: Bringing Fannie and Freddie Back to Mission

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This live event has concluded. Watch the replay for “Making Homeownership Affordable: Bringing Fannie and Freddie Back to Mission.”

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Today in the United States, the average house costs five times what the average American earns in income and accessibility to homeownership is at 40-year lows.

How can policy change this picture? One underutilized resource are the government-sponsored enterprises that buy more than half of all home loans—namely, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These public-backed firms already have a public mission of promoting home affordability. It is because of Fannie and Freddie that the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is a central feature of the U.S. housing market. 

But, as a video released in March 2026 by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy shows, the financing that Fannie and Freddie provide today is skewed toward supporting predominately upper middle class suburban neighborhoods. Both low-to-moderate income urban neighborhoods and rural communities often remain underserved.

Can Fannie and Freddie be retooled today to better align with their missions? 

In this webinar, co-sponsored by Shelterforce and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, we examine some of the steps Fannie and Freddie can take to make homeownership more affordable.

Moderating this webinar is Shelterforce‘s Strategic Initiatives Editor Steve Dubb. Our three expert panelists are: 

George McCarthy is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which he has led since 2014. He is a longtime advocate for housing affordability both from positions that he has held in academia and philanthropy.

Sara Morgan is president of Fahe, an Appalachia-based community development finance institution (CDFI). She has worked for over 25 years in Appalachia, helping to finance housing, infrastructure, community facilities, and community development.

Tony Pickett is CEO of Grounded Solutions Network, which supports community land trusts, deed-restricted housing, and inclusionary housing. He has over 25 years of real estate experience, with a focus on developing mixed-use, mixed-income communities.

This webinar will explore:

• Why is housing becoming less affordable? What are the key drivers?
• What does the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac teach us about the relationship between federal home financing and housing affordability?
• How do the operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac support housing affordability today? Where do they fall short?
• What lessons, good and bad, did Fannie and Freddie learn from the 2008 housing crisis and the Great Recession that followed?
• What is the role of risk assessment in housing financing? What do Fannie and Freddie get right and wrong about their assessments of risk? 
• What steps can Freddie and Fannie take to partner more effectively with community development financial institutions (CDFIs) on housing lending?
• How can Fannie and Freddie boost their support for rural affordable housing?
• How can Fannie and Freddie better support community land trusts, limited equity housing cooperatives, and other forms of community-owned housing?
• How can housing activists help hold the feet of Fannie and Freddie to the fire? What can policymakers do?
• What are the greatest areas of opportunity to expand housing access? 

Whether you’re a housing justice advocate, nonprofit leader, philanthropist, policymaker, or community activist, this webinar will provide you with real-life examples and lessons learned that can inform work in your own community.