On a day when many affordable housing advocates were celebrating, retired U.S. Rep. Barney Frank came to them with a stern word of warning, as well as some encouragement.

Yesterday, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Mel Watt announced that he was going to direct Fannie and Freddie to begin to fund the Low Income Housing Trust Fund, a federal program aimed at enabling sates to protect their existing affordable housing and provide more of it, through a variety of means. The program was initial passed as part of the financial reforms of 2008, but had been left unfunded as Fannie and Freddie recovered from the housing crash. Watt's move will enable about $300 to $350 million in funding in fiscal year 2015, with potentially more to come in future years.

Speaking to a gathering of affordable housing advocates from around New England in attendance at today's Citizens Housing And Planning Association-sponsored conference in Needham, Frank crowed, "We now have a major stream of revenue protected from the appropriations process," but, he warned, "We have to be prepared for the Republican Congress to try [to] repeal it."

Frank called upon the assembled group to coordinate their advocacy once the holidays are over to make sure that their representatives were on board, pointing out that two Republican senators from New England are up for re-election in 2016 - Susan Collins of Maine and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire - and that they may be under particular pressure to support repeal.

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