In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on creating more affordable housing.

He pledged to create 56,000 affordable homes by 2012 through an Affordable Housing Trust Fund. To pay for the new housing, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, better known as HUD, would draw from annual profits at two government-sponsored housing enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The trust fund would be different from existing federal programs for low-income housing because it would be a direct grant to developers, not a loan or tax credit, and it was supposed to pay for especially inexpensive housing, affordable to households making less than 30 percent of the area median income -- or 50 percent in some cases. Most of the money would go to rental units, but some would help people own their own homes.  

It almost happened.

President George W. Bush signed a law in July 2008 that would have done exactly what Obama had proposed. But the housing crash revealed large debts held by Fannie and Freddie, forcing both into conservatorships, where an independent agency has managed their assets and operations ever since. Neither agency has turned an annual profit since 2007, but even if they did, the conservatorships currently prevent money from going to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

The plight of Fannie and Freddie also became the plight of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. About a month after the trust fund became part of federal law, its only source of revenue -- profits from Fannie and Freddie -- evaporated.

Obama and Congress have considered other ways of infusing the trust fund with other money. Despite several bills, budget proposals, white papers and stump speeches, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund is nothing more than a page on HUD's website. More importantly, all those low-cost rental units Obama wanted to create? They never made it to the market.

When we reached out to Sheila Crowley, who heads the National Coalition on Low Income Housing, she noted several obstacles outside Obama's control, including a down economy connected to the housing crisis, and tepid congressional support for solutions.

"Our view is that the administration has been publicly supportive of the housing trust fund and that there have been some attempts of getting it funded, but it certainly wasn't anything that drove the agenda,” Crowley said.

This last part -- about driving the agenda -- is an important caveat. Of course, it's impossible to know whether Obama could have secured new money for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund if it had been higher on his list of priorities. But we do know that in his first two years, Obama signed into law an economic stimulus package worth more than $700 billion, a comprehensive health reform law and an overhaul of financial regulations for Wall Street. His administration also pushed for new laws on climate change and immigration reform.

The housing trust fund received less attention than any of those broad-reaching initiatives.

We'll leave historians the task of judging whether Obama optimized the tradeoffs before him, making the most of finite political influence after his election. With the Obameter we measure outcomes. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund has no money and created zero homes for low-income households. We rate this a Promise Broken.