After a summer recess, the Senate and House return to D.C. on September 5 and 12, respectively. At the top of Congress’s lengthy to-do list is completing fiscal year 2024 (FY24) appropriations bills, including the HUD funding bill.

While the Senate and House Appropriations committees have each passed their own Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) FY24 funding bills, the bills are radically different in how much they would fund HUD programs—including funding for contract renewal, new Section 202 homes, service coordinators, the Older Adult Home Modification Program, and the HOME program. In every respect, the Senate bill is much better than the House’s.

LeadingAge hopes all aging services stakeholders contact their congressional offices using this action alert and urge swift enactment of a HUD funding bill at the highest possible funding levels. Congress is not expected to enact appropriations bills by the October 1, 2023, start of FY24 and thus must pass a continuing resolution, which will have a rough road to enactment this year.

On August 31, the White House sent Congress a list of federal programs that would need stop-gap funding during the duration of any continuing resolution, which typically funds programs at no more than the prior fiscal year’s levels. The list contains a request for additional funding for only one HUD program, the defaulted Reverse Mortgage Funding portfolio, which is not a HUD rental assistant program.

More information on HUD funding for FY24 is available here.