In the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies subcommittee held a hearing to review the President’s FY 2025 HUD budget request. Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman called on Congress to permanently authorize the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery program to allow the Department to respond to disasters in a timelier manner and without Congressional approval each time.
Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) noted the complexity of affordable housing capital stacks and urged more funding for the National Housing Trust Fund to reduce the time it takes to build:
“Whenever you go the dedication of new affordable housing, you realize there are 15 different sources of funding, including five different federal programs, etc. And it makes the job of developer excruciatingly difficult, they have to patch together all these different funding programs, so one thing, if we could robustly fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund it could be hopefully one-stop shopping – that they go in, they get sufficient resources and then they could add to that with LIHTCs, etc. But you know that’s why we’re not building housing month after month; it takes a year to pull together all the different sources so we can do better.”
In the House, the Appropriations Committee announced new guidance that bars nonprofit organizations from receiving congressionally directed spending from HUD’s Economic Development Initiative (EDI) program in FY 2025.
