More than 4,700 organizations – including national, state, and local housing and community development, business, transportation, faith-based, disability, and civil rights organizations, as well as officials in municipal, tribal and state governments – sent a letter on February 21 urging Congress to provide the highest level of funding possible for affordable housing, community development, and transportation programs in fiscal year 2021 (FY21).
The letter explains the broad, positive impacts affordable, accessible housing has for families, seniors, and people with disabilities and discusses the importance of accessible transportation systems and community development programs for rural, urban, and suburban communities. While the two-year bipartisan budget agreement signed last summer (see Memo 7/29/19) provided some relief from the low spending caps on defense and domestic programs, Congress will only have about $5 billion more in FY21 than this year for non-defense programs, including affordable housing and community development programs. In order to cover rising costs, HUD’s budget will need a significant increase over FY20 levels just to maintain assistance to the current number of households. The president’s budget request – released last week – proposed to cut funding for HUD by 15%, or $8.6 billion, below current enacted levels.
Read the full letter at: https://bit.ly/2Ve2peK