Bills
| 3.23.22

Should the Feds Spend $13 Billion on Affordable Housing Over the Next Decade? (S. 2613)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is S. 2613?

(Updated January 15, 2020)

This bill – the Ending Homelessness Act of 2019 — would serve as a comprehensive plan to end homelessness in the U.S. It would fund and create a range of emergency relief grants to help address the needs of people experiencing homelessness.

Specifically, it would provide: 

  • $5 billion over five years for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants to fund an additional 85,000 new permanent supportive housing units. These funds would be distributed using a revised funding formula to ensure that resources are distributed to communities based on need, and they could be used for any eligibility activities under McKinney-Vento, including transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and emergency shelters.
  • $2.5 billion over five years for new Special Purpose Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers to fund approximately 300,000 additional housing vouchers and give preference to people experiencing homelessness, or who are at risk of homelessness.
  • $5 billion over five years in mandatory annual appropriations for the National Housing Trust Fund to create 25,000 new rental units that are affordable to extremely low-income households, with people who are experiencing homelessness receiving priority in the first five years.
  • $500 million over five years for outreach funding to state and local jurisdictions on a competitive basis to provide case management and social services for people experiencing homelessness or or who were formerly homeless.
  • $20 million for states and localities to integrate healthcare and housing initiatives to fund technical assistance for state and local governments to help coordinate their federally-funded supportive housing and health care initiatives through the Healthcare and Housing Systems Integration Initiative (a collaborative initiative between the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and Health and Human Services (HHS) that aims to align policies and funding between health programs and housing providers to deliver supportive housing opportunities to people experiencing homelessness).

Further, this bill would mandate that any housing receiving Housing Trust Fund, project-based rental assistance, and project-based vouchers must keep rents at levels no higher than 30% of household income.

Argument in favor

The homelessness rate has increased in some parts of the U.S. due to rising rents that outstrip families’ and individuals’ abilities to pay. This bill would increase support for those who are homeless, have previously experienced homelessness, and who are at risk of homelesness. It would also help increase the affordable housing stock, making more affordable housing accessible to at-risk renters.

Argument opposed

The federal government has already significantly increased spending on homelessness programs, to the tune of increasing spending from $3.8 billion in 2010 to more than $6.14 billion in 2018 (a 62% increase). However, it hasn’t seen positive results from this massive spending increase. This indicates that the current program model doesn’t work, and needs to be rethought before the federal government pours even more taxpayer money into homelessness assistance and affordable housing programs.

Impact

Homeless people; people who’ve previously experienced homelessness; housing programs; affordable housing programs; HUD; HUD programs to address homelessness and affordable housing; McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants; Special Purpose Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers; National Housing Trust Fund; U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and Health; Human Services (HHS); and rent levels for affordable housing units.

Cost of S. 2613

The CBO estimates that this bill would increase direct spending by $12.8 billion over the 2019-2029 period.

Additional Info

In-Depth: Sponsoring Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, introduced this bill to implement a comprehensive plan to end homelessness in the United States: 

“Housing is a human right – yet too many people don’t have a safe place to call home. We must act quickly to tackle our country’s homelessness crisis head on with serious investments in programs that get at the root causes of this issue. This is our best chance to make a difference and put roofs over people’s heads. The Ending Homelessness Act has already passed out of committee and is likely headed to the House floor soon. The women and men who woke up this morning on a bench or under an overpass cannot afford to wait.”

Original cosponsor Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) adds: 

“No one should ever be without a place to call home, but in the United States we are seeing far too many families facing homelessness. Congress should be doing more to stop this crisis. The Ending Homelessness Act would help end chronic homelessness by funding housing organizations across the country that provide critical services to people who don’t have access to affordable housing. Safe and reliable housing is absolutely essential for the health of our communities.”

The National Housing Law Project is among a number of housing, veterans, and mental health organizations that support this bill. Its Executive Director, Shamus Roller, says: 

“NHLP is grateful to Senator Harris for her work to end homelessness. In a decade, HUD demonstrated that with federal funds for evidence-based practice, significant progress is possible. Providers have stretched McKinney-Vento grant funding to reduce national homelessness by 15% since 2007. Senator Harris' bill would fully fund this program and make important improvements to bring an end to U.S. homelessness within 5 years.”

President Trump has shown an interest in having the federal government more actively fight homelessness; however, the specifics of what that would entail have been unclear. Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office in October 2019, he said that in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, “there’s needles and drugs all over the street, there’s tents, there’s people who are dying of squalor… see what the Democrats have allowed to happen.” Earlier, in September 2019, he complained that homeless people living in tents in California are ruining cities’ prestige. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on a flight to Mountain View, California, he said: 

“We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening. But we have people living in our … best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings and pay tremendous taxes, where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige. In many cases they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave.”

Based on Trump’s comments, some local leaders in California believe that the president’s interest in homeless extends only to the political benefits of making California — a deeply blue state — look bad.

Roger Valdez, formerly housing director at housing and growth advocacy organization Seattle for Growth, says this bill is well-intentioned, but poorly constructed. However, he believes it can be improved: 

“[This] legislation can’t live up to its name because it does nothing to address the fundamental problem that contributes to housing issues – overregulation of all housing productions by local governments. Simply dousing those local governments with more cash won’t end housing inflation or address the many contributing issues that lead people to improvised housing solutions. If money is to be spent, it ought to be heavily conditioned on lowering regulatory burdens… What Harris and Waters should do is create a formula that allocates the $10 billion to jurisdictions that did the following five things: 1) suspend zoning laws; 2) abolish design standards; 3) tax inefficient land use; 4) use that tax revenue to stoke building; and 5) abolish all sales and excise taxes on the production of new housing… This bill can be salvaged if it avoids pouring cash on a problem that lacks definition but instead supports fewer limits on the production of housing of all kinds, in all neighborhoods, for people of all levels of income plus cash assistance and case management where it is needed most.”

House Financial Services Committee Republicans opposed this bill’s House companion when it came up for a vote in their committee. In their minority views to the committee report, they argued that this legislation “ignores the need to develop more effective and efficient approaches” to address homelessness “in favor of simply throwing more money at the problem by increasing HUD homeless spending by 600%.” They argued, “There is no evidence that such spending will substantially or permanently address the underlying causes of homelessness.”

Committee Republicans also noted that the federal budget for addressing homelessness has already grown substantially over the years without yielding positive outcomes, which they argue is a sign that current approaches need to be adjusted before funding increases can be reasonably considered: 

“[S]ince 2010, the combined federal budget for targeted homeless assistance programs, including HUD spending, has grown from approximately $3.8 billion to more than $6.14 billion in 2018, an increase of 62%. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 26 programs, across eight Federal agencies, targeted individuals or families experiencing or at risk for homelessness, with the majority of assistance coming from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and the Veterans Administration. Since 2010, significant resources have been dedicated to addressing homeless. However, the performance metrics over the past eight years do not suggest that the current programs to end homelessness maximize effectiveness. Committee Republicans believe there should be stronger accountability, as well as demonstrable measurements of the effectiveness of taxpayer dollars, before adding significant amounts of new federal spending… [M]erely directing $13 billion in new mandatory spending over five years to existing efforts won't end homelessness. Instead, Committee Republicans fear it will feed a broken system that will not deliver effective, lasting results.”

Additionally, Committee Republicans argued that this bill as written doesn’t protect rural interests (they proposed a 35% rural set aside or limitation on funding the largest 25 metropolitan areas, which was rejected): 

“[This bill] makes no provision to ensure an equitable distribution of resources on a national basis. In rural areas, large geographical areas are served by maybe one or no shelter or service at all. For example, it may take an hour or more by bus for a homeless person to find a shelter in rural areas. In the largest metropolitan areas, however, big shelters and comprehensive services are readily available. A 35% rural set aside or a limitation on funding the largest 25 metropolitan areas, as recommended by Committee Republicans, would have accounted for the significant need to address homelessness in rural, small town and mid-size cities. And, it would have ensured that [this bill] is not biased towards the largest metropolitan urban areas.”

This legislation has six Democratic Senate cosponsors. Its House companion, sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), passed the House Financial Services Committee by a 32-26 party-line vote and was discharged by the House Budget Committee with the support of 46 Democratic House cosponsors. This bill’s odds of passage in the Republican-held Senate are virtually zero. 


Of Note: Based on the results of the 2018 point-in-time (PIT) count, there are over 550,000 homeless people in the U.S., including over 150,000 homeless children and youth. Sen. Harris’ office argues that a dearth of resources and funding has stalled efforts to eradicate homelessness in the U.S., and that rising housing costs “have strained the budgets of middle and working class families, depriving them of the security and dignity that comes with stable living conditions.” 

Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, calls the current situation a “national crisis” that demands a policy response:

“There is a fundamental mismatch between what housing costs and how much money people have (in their budget) to spend on housing. In worst cases, this leads to evictions and homelessness. This is a national crisis, that demands urgent action from policy makers at all levels.”

Nearly a quarter of the U.S. homeless population lives in California. In the past two years, homelessness has spiked in Los Angeles (part of which is represented by House sponsor Rep. Waters) and the San Francisco Bay Area (which Sen. Harris is from, and where she served as district attorney).

In 2018, the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased its focus on homelessness. That year, it awarded a record $2 billion to 7,300 homeless assistance programs across the country under its Continuum of Care program.

Sen. Harris’ office estimates that this bill would lead to the construction of 410,000 new affordable housing units.


Media:

Summary by Lorelei Yang

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / Terryfic3D)