America’s housing supply as well as plans to cut Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) staff and programs took priority in the year’s first hearing of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance on March 4, 2025.

Discussing the nation’s lack of affordable housing in his opening remarks, Subcommittee Chair Mike Flood (R-NE) said that the issue is “not that the government doesn’t spend enough money on federal programs.” Rather, Chair Flood said, the issue is that the nation is not building enough homes to meet demand. “For projects that use federal dollars … those dollars aren’t free—they come with regulatory requirements at the federal level that can make it more challenging to actually give taxpayers the best bang for their buck,” Chair Flood said.

Noting that “the nation is struggling with a fair housing and an affordable housing crisis,” Ranking Member Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO) commented that “the bills under consideration are constructive, but reported efforts to decimate HUD funding or staff are not constructive.” Referring to plans to cut the agency’s staff by 50%, he added, “It would also not be constructive for Congress to pass housing legislation that HUD does not have the capacity or resources to implement.”

Ranking Member Cleaver was referring to three bills floated during the hearing:

• The Housing Supply and Innovation Frameworks Act would require HUD to publish guidelines on state and local zoning frameworks that would facilitate increased housing supply.
• The Housing for America’s Middle Class Act would require a report to Congress that identifies issues with housing affordability for America’s middle-income homeowners and renter.
• The Identifying Regulatory Barriers to Housing Supply Act would require each recipient of HUD Community Development Block Grant to report, at least every five years, on what it did to reduce overly burdensome land use policies.

Hearing witnesses focused on a range of issues.

Nikitra Bailey, representing the National Fair Housing Alliance, called out HUD’s plan to cut 50% of its workforce and its cancellation of half of its signed Fair Housing Initiatives Program grant agreements with local fair housing organizations.

Buddy Hughes, representing the National Association of Home Builders, said that the housing affordability crisis cannot be solved without increasing rental housing supply. “Providing affordable rental housing for lower income households is financially impossible without subsidies, and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the most effective tool available,” Mr. Hughes said.

Tara Vasicek, City Administrator, City of Columbus, NE, said that cities like hers that have taken proactive steps to reform land development codes and eliminate regulatory barriers should be rewarded with increased funding opportunities and grants, with the only requirement being a commitment to housing production. In an exchange with Chair Flood about the lack of affordable housing being a barrier to filling open, Ms. Vasicek said, “Housing and the workforce go hand in hand. If we don’t have one, we won’t have the other.”

Former HUD General Council (under former HUD Secretary Ben Carson) Paul Compton testified that “we are regulating in ways that are excessive compared to the benefits they produce.” Among other reforms, Mr. Compton called for repeal of the “so-called mixed wage decisions with respect to the application of the Davis-Bacon Act to residential development” and urged the Subcommittee to “[t]reat all residential development as simply that – residential without dividing the project up into subsets creating incredible complexity and cost for builders.”

Mr. Compton also discussed the need to reconsider the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which he called out as one example of adding enormous costs to the housing sector “at least insofar as any federal dollars were concerned.”

Full Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) discussed a March 3 letter that she and 121 other House Democrats sent to HUD Secretary Scott Turner seeking answers about “plans to terminate HUD staff across the country, freeze HUD funding which makes up less than 1% of all federal spending, as well as the decision to “[go] after” the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule by repealing it altogether and halt fair housing enforcement efforts under the Equal Access Rule, are cause for deep concern about the future of fair and affordable housing in this great nation.”

LeadingAge intents to submit written testimony to the hearing.

Watch the hearing and read witness testimony here.