Congress

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) issued his 2021 May Revision for the California budget with a number of provisions.

On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs held a nomination hearing for Adrianne Todman to be Deputy Secretary at HUD.

NH&RA joined a letter to the Senate Committee on Banking Housing and Urban Affairs supporting Adrianne Todman’s nomination to be Deputy Secretary at HUD. The letter was led by the ACTION Steering Committee and joined by 17 other federal housing organizations.

President Joe Biden sent the nominations of Mark Colón to be assistant secretary for Community Planning and Development (CPD) and Solomon Jeffrey Greene to be assistant secretary for Policy Development and Research (PD&R) within HUD to the Senate for consideration.

The bill would provide $172 billion to retrofit existing housing through the creation of two new grant programs to achieve carbon neutrality in public housing through workforce development and construction.

The bill retains most of the provisions from the version that was introduced in the 116th Congress, with two notable exceptions in the bond arena. The minimum four percent rate floor has been removed since it was passed into law in the 2020 year-end bill. The new version of the bill lowers the 50 percent bond-financing threshold to 25 percent.

Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Rob Portman (D-OH), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Todd Young (R-IN) along with Representatives Don Beyer (D-VA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Jackie Walorski (R-IN) and Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) introduced the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2021 (AHCIA).

Last week, President Joe Biden sent the administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 discretionary funding request to Congress. The HUD budget requests $68.7 billion, a $9 billion or 15-percent increase from the 2021 enacted level. The funding request does not include line-by-line program requests, but rather requests for a few key HUD programs. A full budget request is expected later this spring.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced the Housing Supply and Affordability Act to create a new $300 million per year grant program to help localities develop and implement comprehensive housing policy plans.

Rep.  Maxine Waters (D-CA), chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, announced the following housing-related hearings in the month of April. All the hearings will be livestreamed here.

This morning the White House released a fact sheet on the American Jobs Plan, a $2.25 trillion infrastructure proposal with several investments in housing. President Joe Biden (D) is expected to give a speech in Pittsburg today at 4:20 p.m. ET to officially unveil the plan. Proposed pay-fors include an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent and a “global minimum tax” on U.S. corporations.

NH&RA joined the Campaign for Housing and Community Development Funding’s (CHCDF) letter to Congressional appropriators urging the highest possible funding amount for Fiscal Year 2022 funding for HUD appropriations. NH&RA encourages our members to also join the letter by the April 9 deadline.