Biden Proposes $100 Billion Budget Fix for US ‘Affordable Housing Crisis’

President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2024 (FY24) budget request seeks $73.3 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a $1.1 billion increase from its fiscal 2023 budget, and calls for a dramatic boost in affordable housing allocations over the next decade.

HUD’s proposed spending plan incorporates annual budget requests from 16 offices within the department, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Government National Mortgage Association.

Among the priorities cited in the budget request is to distribute $104 billion in “mandatory affordable housing investments” over the next 10 years to create dedicated funding and tax credits “to tackle the nation’s housing affordability crisis by making a historic investment in lowering housing costs,” according to HUD’s 42-page FY24 Budget Brief.

Other budget request priorities include $32.7 billion for HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program to help an additional 180,000 low-income families; $3.7 billion to assist domestic violence victims, vulnerable youth, and human trafficking victims find housing; and $2.3 billion for “investing in critical staffing and information technology needs.”

HUD’s budget request also highlights a $752 million proposal to support energy improvements; $410 million to “remove dangerous health hazards from homes”; $90 million for “Fair Housing” programs; and revisions to “improve the transparency” of the Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery Program.

During an hour-long April 20 hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s 15-member Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee, HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge called on the Democrat-controlled Senate to ensure that the Republican-held House understands that requiring Biden’s FY24 budget request to conform to fiscal 2022 funding levels is fruitless exercise certain to be dead on arrival in the upper chamber.

“Our programs touch every community in every town in every state but most of all, they help people, they help families from all walks of life,” she said.

“I understand budgetary constraints, but I would ask we not balance the budget on the backs of poor people, and vulnerable youth, and seniors.”

Senate: GOP Budget Reversion DOA

Asked by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) about how the still-vague House GOP plan to revert to fiscal 2022 funding levels and cap future annual budget increases at 1 percent—which would essentially kill HUD’s proposed $104 billion, 10-year affordable housing fund—would affect her department, Fudge said she could envision numerous immediate effects.

“We know that if we go to the ’22 levels, we would lose 350,000 vouchers and be well over $1 billion short in rental assistance contracts for 87,000 affordable units,” she said. “Because we could not meet our obligations, we would not be able to serve about 50,000 people” in local community homeless programs.

Fudge said the spending request for $1 billion more than last year is a “modest” increase considering the inflationary pressures on land and interest rate increases imposed by the Federal Reserve.

“Things go up. Rent goes up. Prices go up. If we cannot meet the inflation pressures of today, we lose out everywhere,” she said.

If fiscal 2022 funding levels were imposed, Fudge said HUD “would probably have a hiring freeze and have to lay people off,” which would be the opposite scenario of the one envisioned in its proposed budget, in which most of HUD’s agencies receive funding to bolster staffing.

Without more people, she said, HUD “just can’t function the way we should because we wouldn’t have the resources we need” to process applications, herd permits through approvals, and coordinate with builders in developing multi-family affordable housing projects and mortgage assistance programs for middle-income families.

“There is an affordable housing crisis in this nation, a serious challenge for us all” that will require “a whole-of-government approach” to address, Murray said, calling House Republicans’ proposal an admission that “we have a problem and we will not be addressing it.”

Rising Rural, Youth, and Senior Homelessness

Senators asked Fudge how HUD is tailoring assistance programs to adjust to trends in homeless populations, which included m