CINCINNATI, March 16, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- David H. Hehman, president, Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati (FHLBank Cincinnati) announced that the company's board of directors has doubled the amount of funding available to FHLBank Cincinnati member institutions through its American Dream Homeownership Challenge (American Dream) grant program in 2005.
Members are now eligible to receive $2 million this year, disbursed in two separate rounds of $1 million each. Twenty projects will be funded per round.
American Dream was established in 2003 by the FHLBank Cincinnati board as a response to President Bush's Blueprint for the American Dream, a nationwide initiative launched to increase the number of minority households in the U.S. by 5.5 million by the end of the decade. The company's program helps further that goal by challenging its members to create innovative solutions to affordable housing targeted specifically to minority populations and individuals with special needs.
The American Dream program, funded with FHLBank Cincinnati dollars over and above the company's congressionally-mandated Affordable Housing Program, is subject to annual board review and approval. Given the program's success, the board determined that an increase in funds would allow more members to participate in this popular program in support of the FHLBank Cincinnati's housing finance mission. Since inception, American Dream has distributed just under $2 million to fund 40 projects that will create 486 units of affordable housing. To date, it has helped 118 individuals and families become homeowners.
The FHLBank Cincinnati is an $83 billion, AAA-rated regional wholesale bank providing financial services for residential housing and economic development to 750 member financial institutions located in the Fifth FHLBank District of Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The FHLBank Cincinnati has contributed over $190 million for the creation of 31,500 units of lower-income housing through its Affordable Housing Program since 1990. The FHLBank System, which includes 12 district Banks, was chartered in 1932 by the U.S. Congress to promote housing finance but is wholly owned by its 8,000 member institution stockholders and does not use taxpayer dollars.