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Senate Appropriations Bill Maintains Critical Housing Investments While House Bill Makes Deep Cuts
August 1, 2024 @ 4:00 pm
The Senate and House appropriations committees took sharply different approaches to funding rental assistance programs for 2025. While the Senate Appropriations Committee’s bill would fully fund existing housing vouchers and provide more resources for other critical housing and homelessness programs, the House Appropriations Committee’s proposal would result in an estimated 240,400 fewer households receiving vouchers and cut other affordable housing resources. As Congress continues appropriations for 2025, it should adopt the Senate’s higher funding levels and prioritize renewing rental assistance to help people with low incomes afford a stable home.
While increases in rental costs have slowed, rents remain high compared to incomes, and the voucher program is still catching up. More funding for voucher subsidies is needed to maintain current levels of assistance and to ensure that families can use their vouchers in a range of housing options that best suit their needs.
The Senate bill adds enough funding to renew existing housing vouchers, assuming no unexpected increases in program costs. It also provides funding for 3,000 new vouchers for foster youth and for veterans experiencing homelessness — and $268 million above 2024 levels for programs that connect people experiencing homelessness to services and housing.
The Senate bill also includes a demonstration project to test whether using voucher subsidy funds to cover tenants’ security and utility deposits helps households use their vouchers more easily in high-cost, low-vacancy rental markets. Another provision would let the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) give housing agencies additional flexibilities in using population-specific vouchers for people with disabilities and foster youth, acknowledging the barriers these households face and making it easier for them to use their vouchers to secure a home.
Conversely, the House bill increases funding slightly over 2024 levels for Housing Choice Vouchers, but not enough to maintain current levels of assistance. It would serve 240,400 fewer households, we estimate. (See tables below for state-level and demographic housing voucher loss estimates.) Unlike in other years, housing agencies will have limited program reserves in 2025 to help offset any funding shortfalls.
Housing Choice Vouchers are our most effective tool to address homelessness and housing instability, and they serve more than 5 million people. However, the most recent data show that 77 percent of renters with low incomes who need federal rental assistance don’t receive it, as a result of years of underfunding. This unmet need has been slowly increasing in recent years, and further reducing assistance will exacerbate harm.
One reason for the stark difference between the bills: House Republicans omitted critical funding adjustments under the bipartisan agreements in 2023 that raised the federal debt ceiling and set spending caps for 2024 and 2025. The Senate incorporated the funding adjustments and other additional funding in its appropriations bill, enabling it to maintain current levels of rental assistance.
But the agreement’s tight spending caps still limited the funding that could be used to help more people experiencing housing instability. Congress needs to reevaluate these caps and provide additional investments in proven solutions like rental assistance to meet demand and prevent further increases in the number of people experiencing homelessness.
The House bill would eliminate funding for eviction prevention resources; a program focused on inclusive zoning; the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant, which helps eligible Native Hawaiians with low incomes live on their homelands; and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, which is needed to revitalize public and affordable housing and the surrounding neighborhoods that have long been denied resources due to redlining and other discriminatory policies. It would also cut the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which funds affordable housing development and rehabilitation, by $750 million.
The House bill also includes a number of harmful policy provisions:
- blocking localities that have adopted laws or policies that limit their coordination with federal immigration enforcement (“sanctuary cities”) from receiving federal funding;
- preventing HUD from finalizing its proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, a critical tool for helping to combat and reverse the impacts of discrimination in housing and community development policies;
- eliminating a requirement originally established under a COVID-19 relief law that owners of federally assisted properties give at least 30 days’ notice to a tenant facing eviction for non-payment of rent;
- blocking HUD’s ability to implement efforts to promote equity and inclusion for staff and within programs;
- undermining efforts to address the climate crisis; and
- protecting organizations that discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people.
Unfortunately, both bills cut funding for public housing compared to 2024 levels, continuing a long pattern of disinvestment in this source of affordable housing for its more than 1.6 million residents. The House bill would reduce funding by nearly $600 million (6.8 percent), while the Senate bill would make a smaller cut of $28 million. Congress should ensure that a final 2025 bill fully funds public housing. However, both bills would increase Native American housing programs by $111 million to help correct for a decrease in buying power over the program’s history.
Moving forward, Congress needs to reject spending caps and expand rental assistance to help all people with low incomes who need it.
Note: Figures are rounded to the nearest hundred (unless under 100) and may not sum to totals due to rounding.
Source: 2023 HUD Picture of Subsidized Households, HUD Housing Choice Vouchers Dashboard
