SB 109-15: The Housing and Homelessness Plan (Failed)

[Joseph Cao]

A BILL

To tackle the homelessness rate and create secure and adequate housing for all

Be it enacted by the House of Representatives and Senate of Atlasia in Congress Assembled,

Section 1. (Short-title of bill)

This bill shall be referred to as the Housing and Homelessness Plan.

The Housing and Homelessness Plan shall be short-titled the Joe Byron act 1 (JBA1).

Section 2. Definitions

In this act:
Homelessness: Homelessness is defined as living in housing that is below the minimum standard or lacks secure tenure. People can be categorized as homeless if they are: living on the streets (primary homelessness); moving between temporary shelters, including houses of friends, family and emergency accommodation (secondary homelessness); living in private boarding houses without a private bathroom or security of tenure (tertiary homelessness).

Section 3. Purpose (and/or) Findings

There are over a half million people experiencing homelessness nationwide. Nearly 160,000 of them are children and nearly 38,000 are veterans. People who are homeless are unable to acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure and adequate housing.

Section 4. Establishment

This will ensure that every person experiencing homelessness in Atlasia has a place to call home.  The bill would appropriate $13.3 billion in mandatory emergency relief funding over 5 years to several critical federal housing programs and initiatives, providing the resources that these programs need to effectively address the homelessness crisis.  If enacted, this bill is estimated to fund the creation of 410,000 new units of housing for people experiencing homelessness.

The actual annual costs of the bill would be:

$1 billion for new homeless assistance projects, with 75 percent to be spent on permanent supportive housing, distributed to communities by formula, and renewed out of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) regular Continuum of Care (CoC) homeless assistance program competition (which would require additional appropriations each year).
• $500 million for new incremental Housing Choice Vouchers (also known as Section 8 ) for people who are homeless, distributed to communities according to need and renewed out of regular Housing Choice Voucher appropriations.
• $100 million for new outreach and service coordination grants, awarded competitively. Since these activities are eligible for HUD CoC funding, renewals could be done through the regular CoC competition, subject to additional appropriations.
• $1 billion in incremental funding for the National Housing Trust Fund to develop housing, with homeless people prioritized for the first five years.
• $50 million in incremental rental assistance funding to support National Housing Trust developments.

The bill would also permanently authorize HUD’s Homeless Assistance Grants account, and permanently eliminate the sunset clause for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Total annual costs for the program is $2.650 billion.

Section 5. Enactment

This bill shall come into effect when signed by the president.

Sponsor: AFE
Status: Final Vote

The gentleman from Connecticut is recognized.

[Joseph Cao]

Other than the details for the exact funding put into these programs, I take no issue with the present bill and thus would like to sponsor it.

No problem. 24 hours to object to AFE co-sponsoring.

[Joseph Cao]

AFE is recognized as co-sponsor.

[Joseph Cao]

So the first thing is that unless I've missed something completely, we 1) do not have the CARES Act in-game and 2) what COVID relief legislation we did pass doesn't touch on housing, so I don't think we have Homeless Assistance Grants to permanently authorize.

The other thing that jumps out at first glance is how much of the federally administered stuff already overlaps with the Beesley housing bill we passed two months ago. Link here if anyone needs it. Considering a lot of these programs probably tie into 42 U.S.C. §1437 already at some level or other I'm guessing there are a bunch of interactions at play.

I am interested in the potential for lower-level involvement since the NHT is presumably run regionally or with heavy regional involvement. Although it might be a good idea if the text makes clear that the allocation formula is to be run by either an NPC commission or have numbers pulled from RL, to save us all the headache.

Oh, and it's the Atlasian Department of Housing etc.

[Joseph Cao]

Reiterating what Cao said; as we’ve already passed a massive housing bill a few months back, I don’t really see the need for this.

Well, my quibble is mainly with the potential for overlap since the Beesley bill basically amounted to "throw more money at Section 1437" and the proposals here are tied to specific programs that may or may not be bound up in that. The programs with explicit regional or state involvement apart from that I don't necessarily have a problem with, at least not on those grounds.

[Joseph Cao]

Reiterating what Cao said; as we’ve already passed a massive housing bill a few months back, I don’t really see the need for this.

I feel like in order to solve the housing problem, we need to be ready to go above and beyond, expand on the previous proposals, as well as fund new areas that have not yet been looked at.

Expanding in such a way that we cross streams with already-covered areas (which could very well comprise most of the bill aside from the specific parts I mentioned) would be counterproductive to this broader aim though.

These areas are new to us the players but enough of it falls under bureaus and programs and whatnot that are already funded by other programs funded by other programs funded by the previous bill that further funding at a point just becomes watering a succulent with a fire hose. I’d like to see that funding go toward more programs that aren't yet covered this way.

[Joseph Cao]

Would be nice to have more than a bare quorum showing up to vote though, you do have to admit.