Hearings to examine proposed budget estimates for fiscal year 2026 for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Senate Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies
2025-06-11
Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
This afternoon by our ranking member, Jilla Brand, and hopefully we'll have Chair Collins and Vice Chair Murray here momentarily or sometime during this meeting as the other members of the subcommittee as we review the fiscal year 2026 budget request for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Secretary Turney, it's my pleasure to welcome you to your very first hearing before this subcommittee. And I just want to thank you for your willingness, how energetic you are in getting things done, and it's just been a pleasure. I've enjoyed our previous conversations, and I'm so impressed by your diverse backgrounds as your work as a pastor, an athlete, and a Texas legislator. to your leadership on Opportunity Zones and your nonprofit work supporting children in poverty. How you found time to do all of this and to accomplish all of this while being a husband and a father is pretty impressive. Your energy and leadership will be needed as the HUD budget faces a time of uncertainty. As we kick off the FY26 process, I want to highlight that Congress does not have a top-line discretionary budget agreement in place at this time. As a result, the House and Senate will likely produce bills with very different overall spending levels that will need to be reconciled later. Meanwhile, existing home sales failed this spring, the lowest April numbers since 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sluggish home sales and high interest rates suggest that the subcommittee can't rely on strong FHA and Ginnie Mae receipts to offset the CBO score of our bill. And of course, the cost of maintaining existing rental assistance continues to increase, driven by insufficient inventory of affordable housing across the entire country. These housing challenges must be balanced against competing demands in the transportation space, including aviation safety.
As for navigating these funding challenges, I think it's fair to say that OMB did not do you any favors with their request for HUD of $43.5 billion in new spending. This request is $33.6 billion, or 43.6% below the current funding levels. Despite the funding reduction, I'm delighted to see the request continue support for the Foster Youth Independent Living Initiative. This crucial funding ensures that when youth exiting foster care are at risk of homelessness, that they have access to a Section 8 voucher, to help stabilize their housing situation. I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me and recognize the importance of this particular funding and the need to continue assisting youth as they transition out of foster care. As much as I look forward to supporting the request, For FYI, I do have several concerns with a border request. The largest concern, of course, is a proposal to consolidate HUD's rental assistance program, tenant and project-based Section 8 public housing. housing for the elderly, and housing for persons with disabilities into one single block grant. Combined, these programs serve approximately 4.5 million households, the majority of whom are elderly and disabled. There are a lot of concerns that losing this assistance would place those residents at significant likelihood of homelessness. The proposed single block grant would leave it to states alone to determine how HUD funds will be spent. Suddenly replacing current partnerships with local housing authority and contracts with private owners risk undermining HUD's existence. Although this new block grant proposal requires statutory changes from the authorizers, the budget request assumes those changes have already been made and requests $2.7 billion below the current funding level for these programs.
With this proposal, OMB appears to be putting the cart before the horse. Separately, the request proposes the elimination of the popular effective community development block grant program. The CDBG program enjoys strong bipartisan support because it provides flexible funding for critical investments serving low and moderate income communities across the country. This essential resource for state and local government lies at the heart of HUD, Community Development Mission. And at a time when there's a need to increase the supply of affordable housing, the budget request eliminates the home program and the critical role it serves in providing gap financing to countless housing projects every year. I was also disappointed to see the request eliminate the Section 4 and SHOP programs. which grow local nonprofit capacity and use sweat equity models to promote home ownership. Additionally, when we should be making even stronger commitments to lifting up the least among us and ending cycles of poverty and dependency, eliminating the family self-sufficiency and loss programs appear to be penny wise and pound foolish, especially if Congress adopts a rental assistant block grant proposal. There's a danger to pulling on a loose thread. I'm concerned about the broader risk across federal housing programs, not only at HUD, but also at USDA and at Treasury. It feels like we're pulling on multiple loose threads without a clear vision of what comes next. While I understand and share the administration's concerns about rising cost and shrinking revenues, the uncertainty created by these proposals increases risk and risk-raised cost. The cost of uncertainty is reflected in the cost of materials, of labor, and other times it is reflected in either fewer housing units or even entire projects being built. Managing these risks and uncertainties should be addressed with careful thought and deliberation.
As former HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson has often pointed out, a people without a vision will perish. The committee stands ready to work with HUD to identify a path forward to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the programs we fund within the constraints we have to operate. Reducing undue regulatory burdens and lowering the cost of housing production are two examples of where Congress and the administration can identify early successes to build on. I look forward to working with Ranking Member Gillibrand and the rest of our colleagues in writing a physically responsible HUD bill this year.
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