Hearings this week on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) fiscal year 2026 budget request to Congress surfaced both considerable disillusionment with HUD’s paltry FY26 request as well as comradery, among some members of Congress, with LeadingAge’s priorities.

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) and related agencies hearing took place on Tuesday, June 10, 2025 at 10 AM; the Senate’s (THUD) subcommittee followed on Wednesday, June 11, at 3:30 PM.

HUD’s Request Elicits Shock

The Republican House THUD and Senate THUD appropriations subcommittee chairs both expressed levels of deep concern and disillusionment with HUD’s request for 43.6% less funding in FY26 than it has for FY25, the the agency’s proposal to merge its five largest housing assistance programs into one block grant to states– with 42% less funding than the programs collectively have in FY25–and with HUD’s requests to eliminate the Home Investment Partnerships (HOME) Program and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) program, while also cutting its homeless assistance and fair housing programs.

Included in HUD’s FY26 request is the merging of its public housing, housing choice voucher, Section 8 project-based rental assistance, Section 202 Supportive Hosing for the Elderly, and Section 811 programs into a single block grant to states; states funding for these programs, in this FY26 budget, would be 42% less than HUD has in FY25 for these programs. States could fill in that funding gap–or not.

“How do we ensure that this block grant proposal does not increase homelessness and not cost the 10 million or so currently assisted people their housing?” House THUD Chair Steve Womack (R-AR) asked HUD Secretary Scott Turner, the hearing’s sole witness. “Let’s run a new play,” Secretary Turner, a former professional football player, responded. “It’s not about the money.”

Senate THUD Chair Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) told Turner that among her concerns with the HUD request, her largest “is its proposal to consolidate programs into a block grant. These programs serve approximately 4.5 million households, the majority of whom are elderly and disabled. I have a lot of concerns that losing this assistance would place these individuals at significant likelihood of homelessness. …The block grant risks undermining HUD’s existence.”

Full House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) did not hold back either: “Your budget request is a catastrophe of eviction and homelessness,” she said.

Full Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) weighed in, too. “The entire point of your department is to help Americans keep a roof over their heads,” she said. “I am really afraid that pretty much everything that you and President Trump have done to date appears kind of in direct opposition to that goal.”

“We cannot cut HUD by 50% and not have people on the street. These people will die,” Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL) said in his statements that referenced agency initiatives such as the Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS (HOPWA) Program.

Secretary Turner’s response: “There were 770,000 people homeless January 2024 when we had the highest HUD funding. We cannot keep doing what we’ve done.”  To which Representative Quigley asked: “What’s plan B?”

Turner: “We’ll be more effective.” Responding to Quigley’s “How?” query,  the Secretary said: “It’s a new paradigm.”

Highlighting LeadingAge’s Priorities

Points made during these hearings, despite their brevity–each accommodating only one round of questions from the members of Congress to Secretary Turner–did highlight key LeadingAge priorities.

Ranking Member DeLauro noted that homelessness among seniors is rising but HUD proposes “to eliminate dedicated Section 202 housing with no assessment if states can take this on.” She asked: “How are you justifying eliminating dedicated programs that support housing development with onsite supportive services tailored to seniors’ needs?”

Turner’s response: “The proposal will help us more effectively serve the most vulnerable.” Responding to Ranking Member DeLauro’s “How?” query, he said: “By working with the states. States understand their unique needs as it pertains to the elderly.”

Pressed by Ranking Member DeLauro for details–“What is the program that will address that? What is the amount of money? What is the program?”–Turner replied, “As you said, ma’am, you are appropriators. You control the purse strings. My job is to maximize the budget that you do give me. We’ll work with states to identify…” at which point Ranking Member DeLauro interrupted, exclaiming, “You can’t have a budget that doesn’t have any numbers! That doesn’t’ have any programmatic direction! What is your specific program on seniors? What are you doing? You’re eliminating elderly housing section 202, which has been in place for years!”

HUD’s request, as per DeLauro’s reference, has zeros where programmatic funding levels would normally be and includes no programmatic descriptions, instead saying repeatedly to refer to the block grant proposal, which is all but devoid of specifics.

HUD’s Green and Resilient Retrofit Program

Ranking Members from both full appropriations committees highlighted HUD’s freezing of its Green and Resilient Retrofit Program (GRRP), through which more than 50 LeadingAge members received awards. Through court action by other groups, HUD has been ordered to resume the GRRP housing preservation program–however, the agency cancelled contracts with consultants engaged to help facilitate the largest of the GRRP awards and has not reinstated those consulting contracts. The result: HUD multifamily properties with the largest award must figure out on their own if and how they can move forward.

“We have a program in my district in Connecticut, a senior housing program, The Towers. You have frozen their grant and not given them the opportunity to deal with critical renovations for their 55 year old building,” Ranking Member DeLauro said. The Towers is a LeadingAge affordable housing provider member.

In the next day’s Senate hearing, Ranking Member Murray also called out HUD “illegally” freezing the GRRP program and mentioned a Washington state awardee. “Courts told you to process and disperse funds,” Secretary Murray said, “but we are hearing from owners that HUD is doing nothing to restore the [GRRP consultants] that DOGE cancelled, which is holding up this deal from moving forward. We’ve asked HUD five times for briefings on this. Why are you preventing HUD property owners from making overdue upgrades to low income and senior housing?,” Ranking Member Murray asked. Secretary Turner said he could not respond because of the ongoing litigation while saying, “My comments on this will be zero to limited.”

Said Ranking Member Murray: “There are people waiting. These funds are critical. There are court orders and I expect them to be followed. There is nothing objectionable about this funding. This is stunning to me that we are under a court order and you’re not giving the money out.”

Seeking Details on HUD’s Block Grant Idea

When asking to understand how HUD would ensure that older adults and people with disabilities would be protected by HUD’s block grant idea, Secretary Turner told Chair Womack that there is funding in HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) to help states ensure they protect these populations. According to HUD’s budget request documents, the request seeks $11.5 million for PD&R for “implementation support” for the block grant program; the request does not mention older adults or persons with disabilities.

Representative John Rutherford (R-FL) asked how HUD’s physical inspections processes could be improved. “HUD will still be involved in the inspection process,” Secretary Turner said, despite the request zeroing out all funding for the Office of Public and Indian Housing, in which the Real Estate Assessment Center, responsible for inspections, now resides.

HUD Operational and Regulatory Issues

Operational and regulatory issues were raised during the hearing.

“HUD is struggling to meet the most basic responsibilities after losing 2,300 employees through the deferred resignation program,” Senate Subcommittee Ranking Member Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said.

Senate Chair Hyde-Smith asked Secretary Turner to commit to reversing a 2024 HUD rule that requires a 30-day notice of eviction for nonpayment of rent. Secretary Turner committed to working to resolve the issue. LeadingAge supports the notice requirement, which applies to HUD’s public housing and most of HUD’s project-based programs.

Pressure on HUD Funding Bill

If HUD seeking such a dramatic cut for its own funding wasn’t bad enough, House THUD Chair Womack and Senate THUD Chair Hyde-Smith each discussed decreased revenue from the Federal Housing Administration and Ginnie Mae over the last year. These funds help Congress offset HUD’s funding needs. For FY26, offsetting receipts from these programs are down about $1.5 billion compared to FY25 according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

“Regardless of what the Administration sent over in its budget request, the CBO score is what we must live with, which means we are in an even deeper hole than the President’s Budget [request] suggests,” Chair Womack said. “Existing home sales fell this spring, the lowest April numbers since 2009. Sluggish home sales and high interest rates suggest that the subcommittee cannot rely on strong FHA and Ginnie Mae receipts to offset the CBO score of our bill,” Chair Hyde-Smith said.

After describing the many competing demands on the THUD subcommittee’s funding allocation, which must fund the Department of Transportation, HUD, and some smaller agencies, Chair Hyde-Smith told Secretary Turner that, “it’s fair to say that [the Office of Management and Budget] did not do you any favors with the request” that is 43.6% below current levels.

Next Steps

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to markup its FY26 HUD funding bill in its THUD Subcommittee on July 14 and in its full Committee on July 17. The Senate has not scheduled its markups

See the House’s June 10 hearing materials here, and the Senate’s June 11 materials here.

Take action with LeadingAge’s HUD funding action alert.

Keep up with all LeadingAge news on HUD’s FY26 funding in this serial post.