Two Housing Related Hearings in House This Week

The House Financial Services Committee will hold two housing related hearings during the week of October 19, the first in the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance and the second in full Committee.

The first hearing, “The Future of Housing in America: Federal Housing Reforms that Create Housing Opportunity,” is scheduled for October 21 at 2pm ET and will be conducted by the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. The focus of the hearing will be legislation introduced on October 7 by Subcommittee Chair Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO).  The bill, H.R. 3700, the “Housing Opportunity through Modernization Act of 2015,” includes several provisions from the previously introduced, but never-passed “Section Eight Voucher Reform Act” (SEVRA) and “Affordable Housing and Self-Sufficiency Improvement Act” (AHSSIA). H.R. 3700 is noncontroversial (see Memo, 10/13).

The second hearing, “The Future of Housing in America: 50 Years of HUD and its Impact on Federal Housing Policy,” is scheduled for October 22 at 10am ET and will be conducted by the full Committee. Expected witnesses are Orlando Cabrera of Squire Patton Boggs, Renee Glover of Habitat for Humanity, Howard Husock of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative at the Manhattan Institute, and Xavier de Sousa Briggs of the Ford Foundation. This hearing has been rescheduled from a date earlier this month.

Both hearings will be in room 2128 of the Rayburn House office building and will likely be webcast via http://financialservices.house.gov/