Two days after the House proposed dramatic cuts, Senate appropriators on July 20 approved a proposal to “flat-fund,” or maintain at current levels, overall Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding for fiscal year 2024 (FY24).

The June agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling capped overall discretionary spending for FY24 at FY23 levels. The Senate kept to those caps when writing its FY24 HUD funding bill. The House cut spending much deeper than the agreement required, resulting in an FY24 HUD funding bill that underfunds some programs and eliminates others.

The FY24 HUD funding bill passed out of the Senate Committee on Appropriations on July 20 on a 29–0 vote includes notable differences from its House counterpart, which would dramatically cut funding for many HUD programs. The Senate Committee’s bill would fund HUD’s overall Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly account at $1.075 billion, the same amount as FY23. In contrast, the House bill would cut the Section 202 account by 15%.

The Senate bill includes $152 million for new Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly homes; the House bill has no funding for new Section 202 homes. It has more Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) and Section 202 Project Rental Assistance Contract (PRAC) renewal funding than the House bill does. The Senate bill also has $30 million for HUD’s Older Adult Home Modification Program; the House bill would eliminate all funding for this program. The Senate bill has a pool of funds for HUD to provide budget-based rent adjustments to PBRA contracts that have been renewed through the mark-to-market [M2M] program and are distressed or at risk of becoming distressed; the House bill has none of these HUD-requested funds.

The Senate bill also directs HUD to do better when it comes to collecting data on older adults experiencing homelessness. LeadingAge encouraged appropriators to include this language, so policymakers better understand and respond to this issue.

While both bills provide a portion of HUD’s request to increase Section 202 PRAC rents prior to conversion to the Section 8 platform, only the Senate bill also allows HUD to use some of its Section 8 funding to hire consultants, with HUD’s dime, to help smaller Section 202 owners navigate the complicated Rental Assistance Demonstration conversion process.

The Senate Committee’s bill also declines to make additional cuts for specific projects serving LGBTQ households, as the House appropriators did in a July 18 proposal that was denounced by LeadingAge.

The Senate Committee statement says “the bill maintains critical support for HUD rental assistance programs, which assist nearly five million vulnerable households—more than half of whom are elderly or people with disabilities.” The vast majority of HUD’s budget goes toward renewing existing rental assistance contracts. The overall flat funding leaves insufficient room to fund several thousand Section 202 homes or hundreds of new service coordinators—two of LeadingAge’s main priorities for serving older adults with low incomes.

The Senate bill also provides flat funding for the HOME program, which the House bill would cut by 75%. According to a committee statement, the bill slightly increases homeless assistance and HUD’s “Yes In My Backyard” program.

During the Senate markup, Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) cited “tough spending caps,” enacted by the debt ceiling deal reached by Congress earlier this year, that limited the Senate’s overall available funding levels for various federal agencies.

“We were all working under tough topline numbers … we are writing the strongest bills possible,” said Murray. “The housing and homelessness crisis in this country will take a lot more than the flat funding in most areas, and the modest funding increases in some programs, we’ve managed to negotiate,” she said of the HUD funding levels advanced by the Committee for FY24.

Bipartisan Proposal: The Senate committee leadership emphasized their proposal “can actually be signed into law,” compared with proposals that would increase HUD funding levels, but that would not be politically viable. To work around the caps, the committee has proposed using “emergency appropriations” to avoid further cuts to federal programs. The committee advanced the proposed funding levels by a unanimous vote of 29-0.

Next, the Senate and House Committee proposals will be considered by each full chamber before Congress begins a reconciliation process.

Join the LeadingAge Action Alert: Members of Congress need to hear from LeadingAge members about the importance of full funding for affordable senior housing. Take action today.