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The House Appropriations Transportation-HUD (THUD) Subcommittee recently released its draft fiscal year (FY) 2019 spending bill. The House subcommittee bill maintains the 10 percent increase in HUD funding that was secured in FY18 with modest additional increases for FY19, and it ignores President Trump’s call for cuts to affordable housing.

In response to HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s proposal to increase rents and impose work requirements on the lowest income households, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) recently introduced H. Res. 886 to affirm the importance of the Brooke rule. Enacted by Congress in 1969, the Brooke rule limited federally assisted housing tenants' out-of-pocket rent expenditure to 25 percent of their income.

President Trump recently released an executive order, “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility,” designed to guide agencies that administer public assistance programs to effectively reform the welfare system. The executive order is essentially a statement of principles by the president. The proposed work requirements are non-binding and, in the case of housing programs, would require Congressional action to implement.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development held a FY 2019 budget hearing on April 18. HUD Secretary Ben Carson testified, defending his proposal to cut his department’s funding levels. Dr. Carson agreed with senators about the importance of HUD programs, but continually referred to the growing national debt as the reason for the cuts.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson recently unveiled a package of reforms designed to offer public housing authorities, property owners, and HUD-assisted families a simpler and more transparent set of rent structures. Through its Making Affordable Housing Work Act, HUD is seeking to reform decades-old rent policies.

HUD recently awarded nearly $5 million to six communities to help create plans to redevelop severely distressed HUD assisted housing and revitalize neighborhoods. Funded through HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, these grants are intended to help local leaders to craft comprehensive, homegrown plans to revitalize and transform these neighborhoods.

HUD and the City of Houston today announced a joint agreement designed to expand housing choice and mobility for lower income residents, including those experiencing homelessness and victims of Hurricane Harvey.

The agreement requires the City of Houston to adopt multifamily priorities and a policy for objectively evaluating federally supported affordable housing developments in all areas of Houston; to seek to invest additional funds in homeless assistance progra...

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) recently released a new report, The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, which finds a national shortage of 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for extremely low income (ELI) renter households. These are households earning up to 30 percent of their area median income. The report also shows that there are only 35 affordable and available units for every 100 ELI renter households nationwide and that 71 percen...

The Trump administration recently announced the proposed Fiscal Year 2019 Budget for HUD. The budget proposes an 18.3 percent cut from FY 2017 enacted levels. The goal is to reduce the federal involvement in housing assistance and “recognizing” that states and local governments should shoulder that responsibility.             

At the request of House Committee on Financial Services Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) undertook an additional review of the Moving to Work Demonstration (MTW), with a focus on how the demonstration affected public housing and voucher tenants.