WASHINGTON – Annette Houchin worries that it’s hard enough for low-income families around Terre Haute, Indiana, to come up with the $2,000 necessary to get into a home built by Habitat for Humanity.

But a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act financial reforms means low-income people will have to come up with even more, said Houchin, executive director of the group’s Wabash Valley chapter.

All that’s needed is a technical fix to the law, said senators including Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana, and David Perdue, R-Georgia, who are pushing for the change. But Congress hasn’t acted because the issue is wrapped up in broader debate over the reforms passed in response to the recession.

The problem is part of the law that requires home appraisers to be paid “customary and reasonable” fees.

The idea was to deal with allegations that appraisers were unduly influenced by lenders who cut rates and pressured them to appraise homes at higher values. Congress wanted to ensure that appraisers made enough money to refuse if asked to act unethically.

The problem for Habitat for Humanity is that it relies on volunteers not only to build houses but also to appraise them for sale. Now, its appraisers can be fined for not charging the going rate, said Gina Leckron, Habitat for Humanity’s Indiana director.

In Indiana, Georgia and elsewhere, Habitat officials said they may have to start charging people more money – or build fewer houses.

Appraisals in Indiana cost about $350 per home. In Georgia, they cost $400 to $1,000.

“It wasn’t aimed at us, but it’s really a huge problem,” Leckron said. Multiplying the appraisal fees by the 200 homes the group builds in the state a year, she said, “is almost enough to pay for two more houses.”

Each chapter is figuring out how to deal with the problem. Houchin said the Wabash Valley chapter may have to start adding appraisal costs to the closing costs.

In Indiana, a family of four has to make roughly $17,000 to $34,0000 per year to qualify for a Habitat home.

It already takes most a year to come up with the money necessary for closing costs. To expect them to find more because of a law that wasn’t even directed at the program, Houchin said, “just isn’t fair.”

B. Ryan Willoughby, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Georgia, said the group there has tacked the cost onto sale prices, which means higher monthly mortgage fees.

Leckron said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the agencies with jurisdiction over home appraisals, initially told Habitat officials that they didn’t have to worry about the requirement.

The bureau later reiterated in a letter that it did not think the rule applied to volunteers. But it said it’s opinion was “informal” and that five other agencies are responsible for enforcing the regulations.

That wasn’t good enough to assure the group and its volunteers.

“This is yet another example of the unintended consequences of runaway regulations,” Perdue said in a statement. He is co-sponsoring a bill filed last year by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, which clarifies that appraisals donated to Habitat and other housing groups are not affected by the law.

Christopher Ptomey, Habitat’s director of federal relations, said the proposal was bogged down late last year “in a broader disagreement between the majority and minority.”

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, tried to add language to a budget bill to fix the issue, and to weaken other aspects of the Dodd-Frank law. Among them was to reduce the number of large banks subject to increased federal oversight.

Democrats objected to weakening the law, and all of Shelby’s proposed changes went by the wayside.

Ptomey said tweaks like what Habitat wants are typically handled as part of larger bills.

“Congress is not currently moving forward with significant housing legislation,” he said.

A spokesman for the Banking Committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, noted the consumer bureau apparently has no plans to penalize appraisers for volunteering their services. Brown, meanwhile, is looking into whether changes are needed for Habitat and other groups that provide housing to low-income families.

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at kmurakami@cnhi.com