Headlines

› View All News Items

Washington Update

Friday, July 02, 2010

The House today took the first and most significant step thus far in the process leading to the approval of a FY 2011 spending bill for the Departments of Transportation and HUD. The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, HUD and Related Agencies marked up their version of Transportation-HUD (THUD) FY 2011 spending earlier today. NAHRO staff was present for the discussion.

Overall, the bill (if approved) will provide $124.6 billion for both Departments. HUD alone under the bill would receive a total of $46.6 billion, $520 million more than fiscal 2010 levels and about $1 billion more than the President’s request. In an otherwise difficult budget environment this was a surprisingly good result notwithstanding the fact that housing and community development needs exceed funding provided in a number of cases on a program by program basis. A chart highlighting the Subcommittees’ recommendations compared to FY 2010 actuals, the President’s request and NAHRO’s FY 2011 funding recommendations are provided here for your review. Please note that funding levels for certain program categories are not known at this time. We will continue to work with staff to ascertain this information.

Notable in today’s mark-up was the fact that the Subcommittee rejected the Administration’s funding requests for both the Transforming Rental Assistance initiative (TRA) and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, choosing instead to fund the current HOPE VI program at $200 million in FY 2011. Also of note was the fact that the Subcommittee reversed the Administration’s proposed cut with regard to the Public Housing Capital Fund (nearly $500 million) and instead approved funding at the FY 2010 spending level of $2.5 billion. A larger amendment, which would have reduced the Public Housing Capital Fund to the President’s request of $2.044 billion, failed by a recorded vote of 8-5.

Congress will be in recess next week for the Fourth of July holiday. It is unclear at this writing whether or not the Subcommittee’s bill will be taken up by the full House Appropriations Committee before the August recess which in the House will begin on August 2. The Senate has yet to announce a date when its Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee will mark-up their version of the FY 2011 HUD spending bill. More than likely, this will occur before the Senate is scheduled to recess on or about August 6. In both cases, we are continuing to work with Congressional staff to advance our funding recommendations.

NAHRO will be analyzing and reviewing the results of today’s mark-up and will provide further information and comment in the near future via Direct News and the NAHRO Monitor. Questions on the today’s Subcommittee mark-up should be directed to either John Bohm or Cortney Watson.

^Top of Page