The National Low Income Housing Coalition filed suit in federal court in Washington D.C. Tuesday against the Federal Home Finance Agency and Acting Director Ed DeMarco, accusing the FHFA of failing to provide required funding for affordable housing.

The FHFA is required by statute to make contributions to the National Housing Trust Fund, a pool of funds established by the Bush administration in 2008 aimed at producing, preserving, rehabilitating, and operating rental housing for extremely low income households.

The law that created the National Housing Trust Fund mandated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help support the new fund by contributing 0.0042 percent, 4.2 basis points, of each year’s new revenues to its maintenance. However, when Fannie and Freddie were taken into conservatorship in the fall of 2008, payments to the trust were suspended and have not been resumed.  The NLIHC, citing the FHFA’s public financial statements, says that if the payments had been made in 2012 the trust would have been given more than $380 million.

The NLIHC claims that the FHFA, which has overseen Fannie and Freddie since they were taken over, is obligated to resume the payments now that the entities have returned to profitability.

"The time has long past for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be supporting the National Housing Trust Fund as Congress meant for them to do. The delay caused by the Federal Housing Finance Agency is unconscionable given the growing shortage of housing that is affordable for the lowest income Americans. The National Low Income Housing Coalition is taking this action today in hopes these critical resources can be put to use as soon as possible," Sheila Crowley, president and CEO of the NLIHC, said in a statement.

The NLIHC has been joined in its suit by four individual plaintiffs and the Right to the City Alliance.