FY 2012 HUD Budget Passed into Law
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Last week, Congress passed the final, compromise version of the fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding legislation for Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs. The President signed the measure into law on Friday.
As noted in last week's Advocacy Update, the bill cuts funding for HUD programs. McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants received $1.901 billion, which is the same amount as in FY 2011.
HEARTH Implementation
In order to fully implement the HEARTH Act, HUD's Homeless Assistance Grants needed a substantial increase for FY 2012. Despite the budget shortfall, both Congress and HUD are still intent on moving forward with parts of HEARTH implementation. The bill includes, as part of the $1.901 billion, $250 million for the new Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program, of which at least $90 million is expected to go toward prevention and rapid re-housing activities. Congress also allocated sufficient resources to fund all Continuum of Care (CoC) renewals within the $1.901 billion. In its accompanying report on the final bill, Congress directed HUD to put any additional funding toward the ESG and rural housing stability programs. In addition, Congress urged HUD to publish interim CoC HEARTH Act regulations this fiscal year (by October 2012). It is unclear at this time how much total funding will be available for the ESG program or whether HUD will be running a competition this year.
To begin HEARTH implementation, HUD recently released an interim rule for the ESG program, a second funding allocation will be available for prevention and rapid re-housing activities. To help communities learn more about the interim rule and applicable lessons from HPRP, the Alliance will host a webinar on Tuesday, November 29 at 1:00 pm ET. To register for the webinar, please click here.
Overall HUD Funding
With deep cuts to the HUD budget for the second year in a row, many affordable housing programs have seen dramatic decreases in their budgets. Even as homelessness rises across the country, the overall budget constraints are expected to be tighter in the coming years. As Alliance Vice President Steve Berg notes in a recent blog post, it is clear that we all need to continue working together to do remarkable work and to share our results with policymakers. We look forward to continuing our partnership to work toward ending homelessness once and for all.
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