Washington, DC – President Biden and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia L. Fudge announced today their full fiscal year (FY) 2023 budget request for housing and community development programs. The request proposes to fund HUD programs at $71.9 billion in discretionary spending, approximately $12.3 billion more than the FY21 level, or $6.2 billion more than the final FY22 level. The proposed budget also includes $50 billion in mandatory and other federal investments for affordable housing.
“For the second year in a row, President Biden and Secretary Fudge propose the largest single expansion of Housing Choice Vouchers in the program’s history,” said NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel. “This expansion, together with the investments in the House-passed Build Back Better Act, could end homelessness and set the country on a path towards universal housing vouchers."
The “Build Back Better Act,” passed by the House in November 2021, includes a $150 billion investment in affordable housing, with significant funding for NLIHC’s top priorities: $25 billion to expand housing vouchers to an additional 300,000 low-income households; $65 billion to make critically needed repairs to public housing; and $15 billion for the national Housing Trust Fund to build, preserve, and operate an estimated 150,000 units of affordable, accessible housing. While the Build Back Better Act is stalled in the Senate and unlikely to advance further, congressional leaders and the White House continue to work to find agreement on a budget reconciliation package that can garner the support of all Democratic Senators.
“During the presidential campaign, President Biden committed to achieving universal housing vouchers, and both he and Secretary Fudge have since affirmed housing as a human right. It’s time for Congress to make the long-overdue and badly needed investments in solutions to get and keep the country’s lowest-income people stably housed, like those proposed in the FY23 HUD budget and in the House-passed Build Back Better Act,” said Diane Yentel.
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