(RECAP: The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is empty because shortly after Congress set it up in 2008, the companies that were supposed to fund it — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — were seized by the government. Now there is renewed pressure from housing advocates and Democrats in Congress to revive a program that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The FHFA, the regulator of Fannie and Freddie, barred the companies five years ago from paying into the fund, citing their precarious financial condition. Now that the mortgage financiers are posting record profits, it’s time to reverse that decision, a group of 33 U.S. senators wrote in a January letter to Melvin L. Watt, who had just become head of the FHFA.)