Housing Finance Agency Allocations

At the height of the recession in the early 1980Õs, a multitude of state and locally sponsored housing finance agency programs were legislatively introduced in response to populist pressure. Many of these controversial programs utilized lower cost municipal bonds to subsidize private sector housing programs and had remarkable diversity in their stated objectives. This study focuses on one of these programs, the Ohio Housing Finance Program, which purported to address the needs of mainly first-time home buyers. Housing program evaluations, while rarely done, are very important where public borrowing is used to support them. Using county-level demographic data for 1983, the empirical results suggest that the Ohio programÕs target clientele, first time home buyers, were the major beneficiaries of the program.