CARH’S BROADCAST E-MAIL – Legislative Update

June 23, 2015

This morning, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) voted to essentially eliminate funding for the HOME program.  The Subcommittee voted to fund the program at $66 million. The House version of the THUD bill (H.R. 2577) would fund the program at $767 million, a decrease from the Administration’s requested level of $1.060 billion. (There is no Senate bill number assigned to the Senate’s version of the THUD bill.  A bill number is not assigned until after full Committee action). CARH understands that Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and THUD Subcommittee will offer an amendment on Thursday, June 25, to restore funding for the program to a level of $1.2 billion. 

It is essential that CARH members who have Senators that serve on the Senate Appropriations Committee, call or email them and ask them to support Senator Coon’s efforts to restore funds to the program.  Committee members are:

Republican Members                        Democrat Members

Thad Cochran (Chair) (MS)                    Barbara Mikulski (Vice Chair) (MD)
Mitch McConnell (KY)                             Patrick Leahy (VT)
Richard Shelby (AL)                                 Patty Murray (WA)
Lamar Alexander (TN)                             Dianne Feinstein (CA)
Susan Collins (ME)                                   Richard Durbin (IL)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)                                Jack Reed (RI)
Lindsey Graham (SC)                               Jon Tester (MT)
Mark Kirk (IL)                                            Tom Udall (NM)
Roy Blunt (MO)                                         Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
Jerry Moran (KS)                                      Jeff Merkley (OR)
John Hoeven (ND)                                    Chris Coons (DE)
John Boozman  (AR)                                Brian Schatz (HI)
Shelley Moore Capito (WV)                    Tammy Baldwin (WI)
Bill Cassidy (LA)                                        Christopher Murphy (CT)
James Lankford (OK)
Steve Daines (MT)

Click here to access contact information for all Senators. Even if your Senator is not a member of the Appropriations Committee you should make the contact to show support for this very vital component of affordable housing.

In contacting your Senators please make the following points:

• HOME uniquely empowers state and localities to respond to the housing needs they judge most pressing, allowing them to serve the whole spectrum of need from homelessness to rental to disaster recovery assistance.
• HOME is flexible and can be used in rural or non-rural areas.
• The program is a vital piece in financing numerous affordable housing developments, many of which would not be able to go forward and many of which would not provide housing for low-income families with HOME assistance.
• HOME does not replace resources committed to rural areas, but is an important gap financing program.
• States and localities leverage HOME by generating almost four dollars of other public and private funding to HUD.
• CARH Members should also include specific transactions which show the usage of the HOME program in the states.

If CARH members are able to receive a commitment from your Senator’s office for increased funding and in particular Senator Coon’s amendment, please let the national CARH office know by emailing us at carh@carh.org.

See the chart below for a visual of the proposed cuts.