On consecutive days during the week of April 28, the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on transportation and housing hosted leadership from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to review the agency’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request. During the relatively collegial hearings, lawmakers from both congressional chambers heard testimony and asked questions of HUD’s acting Secretary Adrianne Todman, who stepped up to the role following former Secretary Marcia Fudge’s resignation in March.

Congressional Subcommittees generally hold hearings in response to each agency’s annual budget request, which kicks off the federal funding process for the following fiscal year. The May 1 hearing in the House of Representatives was the first for Congressman Steve Womak (R-AK) since taking up his new role as Chairman of the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations Subcommittee. He stressed the importance of finishing the funding bills “on time,” meaning ahead of the September 31 end to the current fiscal year. Subcommittee Ranking Member and long-time affordable housing champion Mike Quigley (D-IL) agreed and committed to advancing the most constructive HUD budget possible under the current overall budget caps, which limit the Committee’s spending for the year.

In her testimony, acting Secretary Todman focused on the overall budget proposal for next year, including what she called a “bold set of values and policies.” Her testimony stated that the budget prioritizes expanding access to affordable housing and rental assistance, promotes rental affordability and fairness, builds climate-resilient and energy-efficient homes, boosts homeownership and wealth-building opportunities for all, ensures communities can equitably prepare for disaster, protects families from health hazards, and advances efforts to prevent evictions and address homelessness with the urgency it requires.

When asked which one thing would make the difference for affordable housing in America, she said to catch up on a decades-long backlog of building more units. While HUD’s budget proposes some new funding for rental assistance and Multifamily Housing development, the budget includes what Todman calls “tough decisions” and even cuts out critical funding to build new homes under HUD’s Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Program.

LeadingAge has launched an advocacy push to urge Congress to adequately fund affordable senior housing programs, including to resurrect funding to build new Section 202s – take action for a robust FY25 HUD funding bill here.

In addition, Senator Menedez is circulating a letter of support among his congressional colleagues for the Section 202 program – ask your Senator to join the letter ahead of the May 9 deadline.

Both the House and Senate hearings focused heavily on homelessness. HUD’s most recent “Point in Time” study – which counts the number of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on a single night in January – showed a 12% year-over-year increase for 2023, a record high since data collection began in 2007. “To start with, homelessness is not a crime,” stated Secretary Todman as a response to questioning that alluded to the current Supreme Court debate on local ordinances penalizing individuals for unsheltered sleeping, among other living conditions. HUD’s budget request for FY25 proposes significant new investments in addressing homelessness, including a specific funding allotment for states to prevent older adult homelessness.

Several Senators used the opportunity to request follow-up from HUD on issues specific to their home states, including delays in processing grant awards for new construction projects, as well as overall issues like rising inflation and bottlenecks in housing development. Certain lawmakers also pushed back against a recently-announced policy in the House that non-profit organizations would no longer be eligible for community project funding. The acting Secretary also highlighted a number of housing management-related improvements underway at HUD, including better oversight via the new NSPIRE housing inspection protocol, and implementation of the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act (HOTMA), which the agency hopes will result in streamlining for housing providers.

House Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-NY) specifically raised the issue of meeting the housing and services needs of older adults with low incomes. She referenced small Public Housing Authorities interested in expanding their resources for supportive services through the creative use of project-based vouchers, as well as allowing cities to utilize a higher percentage of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding for services. Acting Secretary Todman showed interest in exploring various approaches to services funding and highlighted a recently launched state accelerator program that bridges HUD funding with the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) to promote housing and services investments in eight pilot states.

House Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) was not able to be present due to tornado-related disaster recovery in his home district; his colleagues spoke on his behalf to urge acting Sectary Todman to take action to strengthen HUD’s disaster response capacities through the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.

LeadingAge will continue to push for more investments in affordable senior housing programs and will work with Congress as the full Appropriations Committees take up funding bills for Fiscal Year 2025.