On June 23, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation-Housing and Urban Development passed its fiscal year 2023 HUD appropriations bill.

The FY23 HUD bill would provide $62.7 billion for HUD, including a 16% increase for HUD’s Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly account. The Subcommittee mark-up was overshadowed by the passing, earlier in the day, of Subcommittee Chair David Price’s wife, Lisa. As members expressed their condolences to Chair Price, Subcommittee Vice Chair Mike Quigley (D-IL) ran the mark up. Adding to the somber tone of the mark-up were references to Chair Price’s retirement from Congress this fall, after serving more than 30 years in the House.

“I’m very pleased with how this bill will improve countless lives across the country,” Vice Chair Quigley said. While Subcommittee Ranking Member Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL) agreed there was much to like about the bill, “the bill is written under unrealistic numbers, it is written as excessive, and I cannot support it,” he said. For example, Ranking Member Diaz Balart said, the Housing Choice Voucher expansion in the bill “sounds nice but its costs will multiply over future years as it becomes like mandatory spending.” “Once we have bi-partisan agreement on federal spending levels,” he said, “I’m confident we can get a final bill done.”

House Committee on Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) told a story of her family’s eviction from her home when she was nine years old and said she is very proud of the Subcommittee’s bill as it strengthens access to housing for the most vulnerable people.

The bill, which now heads to the full House Committee on Appropriations for a vote on June 30, would provide around $300 million for new Section 202 homes, an increase from the FY22 level of $199 million, and would fully fund housing subsidy contract renewals as well as Service Coordinator grant renewals. The bill includes $31 million for new Service Coordinators and $6 million to ensure rents can support needed preservation costs after conversion in the Rental Assistance Demonstration. The bill would also fund 140,000 new Housing Choice Vouchers.

The bill also contains 147 pages of “community project requests” aka earmarks.

The House Subcommittee’s HUD funding bill, like all of the House funding bills, is based on a “deemed” or assumed overall budget caps that have not been negotiated with Republicans or Senate counterparts. The Senate HUD bill will likely be considered after August recess and will be under much more significant budget pressures than the House’s FY23 bills. Affordable senior housing stakeholders will have to continue their drumbeat of support to sustain the gains in the House Subcommittee’s bill through enactment. This LeadingAge action alert for affordable senior housing funding emphasizes the need for strong HUD funding in FY23 and should be used by advocates to communicate with House and Senate offices.

LeadingAge heralded the June 22 release of the Subcommittee’s bill, noting that the bill’s investments for new Section 202 homes would provide for about 3,500 new Section 202 homes.

The bill is scheduled for a full Committee mark up on June 30.