House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee Marked-Up the USDA Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Proposal

CARH’s BROADCAST EMAIL—Legislative Alert

June 19, 2024

On June 11, the House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee marked-up the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 funding proposal for USDA. The full Committee will not mark-up this bill until after the July 4^th recess.

As you can see from the attached chart, the Subcommittee’s proposal would fund most USDA housing programs below the Biden Administration’s proposed FY 2025 budget, as well as the FY 2024  enacted level of funding.

Under the Subcommittee’s bill, $28 million was proposed for the Multifamily Preservation and Revitalization (MPR) program which is $60 million less than FY 2024 final appropriations and is $62 million below the Administration’s proposal. For Section 538, $400 million was proposed, which is the same as FY 2024 and what was proposed in the Administratoin’s proposal. Section 515 would be funded at $48 million, which is $12 million below the FY 2024 appropriations and $12 million below the Administration’s proposal.

In the House language, the Section 521 Rental Assistance (RA) program would be funded at $1.68 billion which is $76 million above FY 2024 final appropriations, but $44 million below the Administration’s proposal. The Administration had proposed moving the Section 542 voucher program under the Section 521 RA account. The House subcommittee rejected that proposal, as they have for the last several funding cycles. Thus, the Section 542 program remains a separate line item. The final appropriations for FY 2024 included language that provided RD with authority to structure a demonstration program that would decouple RA from the Section 515 program for 1,000 units in properties where a mortgage is set to expire. The House subcommittee bill would continue this authority for an additional ,1000 units in FY 2025. CARH is very supportive of these demonstration programs. During CARH’s upcoming Annual Meeting & Legislative Conference next week, we will hold a roundtable session with RD officials to ascertain progress on the FY 2024 demonstration program and provide input on how the program should progress. We will continue to update CARH members on how decoupling can be used as a tool to preserve the aging portfolio.

CARH will continue to update our members as the FY 2025 budget process continues through Congress. The budget will also be a topic of discussion next week during CARH’s Annual Meeting & Legislative Conference.

For other news and information affecting the affordable rural housing industry, please visit the Newsroom on CARH’s website, www.carh.org.