House Appropriations THUD Subcommittee Approves $61 Billion FY 2021 HUD Spending Bill with Additional $49 Billion in One-Time Investments

The House Appropriations Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Subcommittee approved its $75.9 billion fiscal year (FY) 2021 spending bill yesterday. According the committee release, the proposed funding level for the full bill represents $1.7 billion (2.2 percent) more than FY 2020 and $16.8 billion (28.4 percent) more than the FY 2021 request by the Trump administration.

For the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the bill provides gross appropriations of $61.3 billion, a $4.8 billion (8.5 percent) increase from FY 2020, but $13.4 billion (27.9 percent) more than the FY 2021 request. Receipts from the Federal Housing Administration and Ginnie Mae are projected to be $10.7 billion, $3.3 billion (44.3 percent) more than in FY 2020, so Congress had more funding available to allocate to HUD programs and decreased the need for new appropriations under the spending cap allowed for nondefense discretionary spending. The bill provides HUD net appropriations of $50.6 billion, a $1.5 billion (3.1 percent) increase from FY 2020, and $13.3 billion (35.7 percent) more than the FY 2021 request.

The funding allocation in the bill was made possible by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, which set the nondefense discretionary budget cap at $627 billion for FY 2021.

In addition to the “regular” annual HUD appropriations, the bill proposes a special one-time investment of $49 billion for HUD programs, essentially doubling the HUD budget for FY 2021, with the following funding levels to make robust and resilient investments in public housing, affordable housing and community development, including:

• $24.25 billion for the Public Housing Capital Fund;
• $17.5 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program;
• $4 billion for the Community Development Block Grant;
• $1 billion for Native American Programs;
• $750 million for capital improvements for properties receiving project-based rental assistance;
• $750 million for Section 202 Housing for the Elderly;
• $300 million for the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative;
• $179 million for Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities;
• $100 million for the Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes;
• $55 million for Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership Opportunity programs;
• $20 million for the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant;

While the additional $49 billion in one-time investments for HUD programs is very unlikely to be adopted by the Senate, it represents the key HUD priorities for House THUD Appropriation Subcommittee Democrats as a part of infrastructure legislation or supplemental appropriations.

The bill would also prohibit HUD from implementing its proposed regulations to evict undocumented and unauthorized immigrants in mixed status households from HUD-assisted housing and its proposed changes to the Equal Access Rule, which could endanger the access of transgender people seeking shelter and other housing assistance. It would also provide for a new $100 million cybersecurity and information technology fund to update and protect HUD’s aging and obsolete information technology.

Highlights of the HUD program funding levels follow.