CASPER, Wyo. — Wyoming’s senior United States Senator is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee who released a majority staff report on Thursday calling for reform to federal housing assistance programs.
“The federal government’s current approach to housing assistance is failing the neediest among us,” Enzi said in a press release from his office. “It is a failure that last year Washington spent over $50 billion on housing, guaranteed about $2 trillion in home loans, and provided billions more through the tax code, yet more than half a million people in this country were homeless on a single night in 2019.”
“This demonstrates that if we started from scratch, few would design the system we currently have. We must improve and simplify an overly complex system and work to streamline duplicative programs under one roof. That way the millions of Americans who need these services can find and actually use them.”
The report states that the U.S. Government Accountability Office analysis found that 20 different entities administer 160 housing assistance programs and activities across the country.
“This sprawling, fractured system is the result of 80-plus years of legislative efforts to address shifting goals,” the report states. “Those changing priorities and other shifts have led to duplication and overlap.”
The report pointed to examples of what the Senate Budget Committee’s majority staff consider to be redundant or duplicative aspects of the federal housing assistance system:
x The loan guarantee and rental assistance programs of the departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) overlap in terms of the assistance offered, service delivery, and areas served.
x HUD’s three main rental assistance programs—Public Housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and Section 8 project-based rental assistance—each have similar eligibility rules and serve largely similar populations.\
x Two block grant programs, the Housing Trust Fund and the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, are identical in many respects and should be consolidated or streamlined. They are the same in terms of their allocation, administrative funds, fund commitment and expenditure deadlines, and overall goal of affordable housing.
x The government also supports housing through tax preferences. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit is a multi-billion dollar tax expenditure that overlaps with other housing programs, most notably project-based Section 8 and the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher Program. Senate Budget Committee Majority Staff Report
The report recommends that federal housing assistance reform begin by “consolidating some of these programs under one roof.”
“Merging programs to eliminate duplication and overlap will make funding for housing programs go further,” Enzi’s office said. “These programs, in turn, would be able to serve more people because they would be less confusing. This would make solutions easier to find and utilize.”
“Reform would also push federal employees to focus on finding the best solutions for those seeking assistance as opposed to trying to preserve their isolated programs.”
Enzi’s office said the report also found a lack of transparency about “basic information about the administrative costs of housing assistance programs, and the number of employees who work on them.”
“Our current approach is no way to deliver services to the neediest Americans or responsibly steward billions in taxpayer dollars,” Enzi’s office added. “Congress should undertake bipartisan review and reforms to create a modern housing assistance program to improve effectiveness and efficiency.”
The executive summary of the report can be found here and the full report can be found here.
