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Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): FY2011 Appropriations


Maggie McCarty, Coordinator
Specialist in Housing Policy

Libby Perl
Specialist in Housing Policy

Bruce E. Foote
Analyst in Housing Policy

Katie Jones
Analyst in Housing Policy

Eugene Boyd
Analyst in Federalism and Economic Development Policy


The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the federal agency charged with administering a number of programs designed to promote both the availability of safe, decent, and affordable housing and community development. The agency submits a budget as a part of the President’s formal budget request each year, and then Congress, through the appropriations process, decides how much funding to provide to the agency. Funding for HUD is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation, HUD, and Related Agencies subcommittees of the House and the Senate appropriations committees.

Regular appropriations for HUD (not including emergency supplemental funding) have increased by 57% in the past nine years. This increase in the HUD budget has been partly attributable to increased funding for HUD programs, particularly the Section 8 programs, which have had a 70% increase in funding over this period and have grown to account for well over half of HUD’s total budget. The increase in funding has also resulted from a decrease in the amount of rescissions, collections, and receipts available to offset the cost of the HUD budget.

For FY2011, the President’s budget requested about $45.57 billion in net new budget authority for HUD, a decrease of about 1% from the FY2010 enacted level. However, the requested decrease in net new budget authority would actually include a 3% increase in appropriations for HUD programs in aggregate. The overall increase in appropriations requested would be more than offset by a substantial increase in offsetting collections and receipts, which are estimated to come from proposed changes to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance programs. The two Section 8 rental assistance programs were requested to receive the largest increases, followed by increases for programs for the homeless and for HUD’s research and technology needs. The President’s budget proposed decreased funding for other programs, such as programs providing housing for persons who are elderly or disabled and capital repairs in public housing, and the brownfields redevelopment program would no longer be funded.

The House Appropriations Committee reported its version of the FY2011 HUD funding bill on July 26, 2010 (H.R. 5850, 111
th Congress), and it passed the full House on July 29, 2010. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version (S. 3644, 111th Congress) on July 23, 2010. The House-passed version would have provided $46.55 billion for HUD in FY2011 and the Senate committee-reported version would have provided $46.59 billion, about $1 billion more than the President’s request.

When no appropriations legislation was enacted before the beginning of FY2011, the 111
th Congress enacted a series of continuing resolutions (CR) to continue funding at the FY2010 level for most accounts in the federal budget, including all of the accounts in HUD’s budget. The last CR of the 111th Congress (P.L. 111-322) extended funding into the 112th Congress. On February 18, 2011, the House approved H.R. 1, a year-long CR that would have funded some HUD accounts at their FY2010 levels but would have reduced funding for many accounts, resulting in an overall reduction in funding for the agency. H.R. 1 was considered, but rejected, by the Senate on March 9, 2011. The 112th Congress approved three short-term CRs (P.L. 112-4, P.L. 112-6, and P.L. 112-8) before enacting a final year-long CR (P.L. 112-10), which was signed into law on April 15, 2011. The final FY2011 appropriations law cut funding for HUD, relative to FY2010, but not as deeply as was proposed in H.R. 1. The act also included a 0.2% across-the-board rescission for all discretionary accounts, including those in HUD’s budget.


Date of Report: April 20, 2011
Number of Pages: 42
Order Number: R41233
Price: $29.95

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