Congressional appropriators are continuing negotiations over final fiscal year (FY) 2024 spending bills, including the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bill that funds HUD’s vital affordable housing and homelessness programs. Congress has until March 1 – when the continuing resolution (CR) currently maintaining funding for HUD programs expires – to reach a final agreement on an FY24 spending bill, pass another CR, or face a partial government shutdown.
Ongoing negotiations are taking place against a national rise in the number of people experiencing housing instability and homelessness. Households with the lowest incomes are most at-risk and most impacted. The need for sufficient funding in FY24 – and the need for long-term, targeted, sustained investments in the nation’s housing safety net – is growing more urgent, as more people struggle to afford the cost of housing. However, appropriators are also working under restrictive caps put in place by the “Fiscal Responsibility Act,” a June 2023 agreement to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for capping spending in FY24 and FY25.
With topline funding for each of the 12 spending bills decided, Senate and House THUD Subcommittee leaders – including Senate Subcommittee Chair Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Ranking Member Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), as well as House Subcommittee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) and Ranking Member Mike Quigley (D-IL) – are deciding how to allocate funding among HUD and U.S. Department of Transportation programs.
Appropriators 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) has published a blog post with a state-by-state estimate of the vouchers lost under each proposal.
Your Advocacy is Working – Keep Up the Fight!
Your advocacy makes a difference! It is thanks to the hard work of advocates that – at a time when programs faced cuts of up 25% – HUD received increased funding in 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.
- Increased funding for public housing operations and repairs.
- At minimum, the Senate’s proposed $3.9 billion in funding for Homeless Assistance Grants.
- The protection of $20 million in funding for the Eviction Prevention Grant program provided in the Senate bill.
- The House’s proposed $1.1 billion in 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 2,200 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.