U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Chair Kay Granger (R-TX) worked through the weekend to reach an agreement on topline spending for each of the domestic spending bills – known as “302(b) allocations” – including the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bill that funds HUD’s vital affordable housing and homelessness programs. The details of the agreement, however, are not yet publicly available.
With an agreement reached, the appropriations leaders must reconcile differences between the House and Senate draft spending bills, which propose 10% and 13% increases to HUD’s budget, respectively. However, neither bill provides sufficient funding to renew all existing Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) contracts upon turnover. Under the Senate bill, an estimated 80,000 vouchers would be lost, and under the House bill 112,000 vouchers would be lost. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) published a blog post with a state-by-state estimate of the vouchers lost under each proposal.
Your Advocacy Is Working – Keep It Up!
Thank you to all those who participated in the Campaign for Housing and Community Development Funding’s (CHCDF) National Day of Action on January 25! Your advocacy makes a difference! It’s thanks to the hard work of advocates that – at a time when programs have faced cuts of up 25% – HUD would receive increased funding under both the House and Senate FY24 proposals. But the fight isn’t over!
Congress needs to keep hearing from you about the importance of affordable housing and homelessness programs! NLIHC is calling on Congress to provide in this year’s budget:
- Full funding to renew all existing contracts for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program.
- Full funding for public housing operations and repairs.
- The Senate’s proposed funding for Homeless Assistance Grants.
- The protection of $20 million in funding for legal assistance to prevent evictions in the Senate bill.
- The House’s proposed funding for Native housing.
Advocates can continue to engage their members of Congress by:
- Emailing or calling members’ offices to tell them about the importance of affordable housing, homelessness, and community development resources to you, your family, your community, or your work. You can use NLIHC’s Take Action page to look up your member offices, or call/send an email directly!
- Using social media to amplify messages about the country’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis and the continued need for long-term solutions.
- Sharing stories of those directly impacted by homelessness and housing instability. Storytelling adds emotional weight to your message and can help lawmakers see how their policy decisions impact actual people. Learn about how to tell compelling stories with this resource.
National, state, local, tribal, and territorial organizations can also join over 2,100 organizations on CHCDF’s national letter calling on Congress to support the highest level of funding possible for affordable housing, homelessness, and community development resources in FY24.