House Advances Half of Annual Funding Bills

The House has passed 6 of its12 annual funding bills for FY23. The package included Agriculture-FDA, Energy and Water, Financial Services, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA, and Transportation-HUD appropriations (this bill includes the House’s recommended funding level for the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP).

Please keep in mind, the House advanced these bills without Republican support for the overall funding levels. As a result, the House’s recommendations are likely to be the “high water mark” for FY23 funding and will eventually recede during negotiations with Senate Republicans later this year. 

The House has recommended the following funding levels and provided the accompanying “report language” or instructions to federal agencies. To read the full reports please see the accompanying links below. 

• Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program
  • $107 million, equal to the FY22 enacted level, of which at least $25 million shall be for Systems-Change Planning Grants. 

Accompanying the YHDP funding is a statement from the Appropriations Committee strongly stating its belief that every CoC must provide safe, inclusive, and culturally appropriate services for youth at risk of or experiencing homelessness. This increased funding and System Planning Grants are “intended to advance best practices learned in this demonstration through targeted training and technical assistance to help inform broader systems change. The Committee encourages HUD to utilize providers with experience in authentic youth engagement and support for existing YHDP communities.”

The Committee supports HUD placing an emphasis on projects that can demonstrate community-wide authentic youth collaboration in strategy, design, and implementation; quality data collection, management, and utilization of youth experiencing homelessness; and collective ownership of a common goal to end youth homelessness as demonstrated by a coordinated plan with accountability to community-wide performance indicators. The Committee applauds the Department’s work to ensure that the voices of youth with experiences of homelessness are an integral part of a local community’s application and planning process, and that youth are further integrated into HUD’s own process for reviewing applications for the demonstration. The Secretary is encouraged to utilize models and practices that are informed by authentic youth engagement and shared decision-making. 

Lastly, the Committee directs HUD to produce a report to the Committee on the ways HUD can increase the capacity of CoCs to comprehensively plan for and address homelessness among youth. 

Read the full text on the Committee’s instructions on page 150 of House THUD Report.

Official summaries of the complete FY23 THUD funding bill from the House can be found at the following link:  Transportation Housing and Urban Development

The remaining subcommittees’ bills are now moving through review by the full Appropriations Committee after which they will likely receive a vote on the House Floor, but it’s unclear if they’ll advance any more before the August recess. The Senate has yet to move their versions of the FY23 funding bills through their respective Subcommittees, but may do so before the Senate recesses on August 8. Republicans have also had virtually no input into the Senate’s annual funding bills, so the Senate’s recommended funding levels will also likely be higher than the ultimate final funding allocations, as Republican support will be needed to pass the final bills in November or December.