|
Off-site Links To Legislation and Other Information |
THOMAS.gov Bill Data--The Library of Congress |
Non-partisan Budget & Spending Information |
The White House |
National and International Resources We Use |
Does Your Opinion Match the Polls? |
|
Legislation News & Report (TM) TheWeekInCongress.com (TM) Managing America: Housing |
|||||||||||||||
|
TheWeekInCongress.com (TM) Week Ending July 13, 2006
H.R.1851 To reform the housing choice voucher program under section 8 of the United States Housing Act of 1937.
The bill makes revisions and changes to the section 8 program that provides for low-income housing needs in the US Housing Act of 1937.
The bill begins with establishing that if inspections of dwelling fails for conditions that are not life threatening that rent assistance payments will continue for thirty days but will be suspended if the deficiencies are not corrected. The rent assistance is paid to the landlord to make up the difference between what the tenant can pay and what the landlord’s expenses are. A Public Housing Authority may have allowed occupancy of the dwelling if another Federal program inspected and found no deficiencies in the preceding 12 months. The PHA can make payments to the owner retroactive to the beginning of the lease term.
The bill also increases inspections to at least every two years and allows for Federal or State inspections in lieu of PHA inspections. The PHA may withhold rent voucher assistance to any property that failed inspection and was not corrected in 90 days. The withheld voucher assistance can be used to make repairs and provides that the tenant can not be evicted because the voucher money is being withheld or spent on repairs.
The bill provides that section 8 vouchers may not be reduced when used in conjunction with income housing tax credits. The percentage of vouchers a PHA can use is increased from 20% to 25% with the authority to go to 30% to serve homeless persons. Other voucher program modifications would increase the usefulness of the program. Voucher contract terms are extended from ten to fifteen years.
Tenants with an income of more than 90% from a combination of Social Security, SSI, government and private pensions must be certified as income eligible every three years but may be recertified more frequently if earned income increases of falls by $1500.
The process of calculating rent for the voucher program and project-based assistance is revised. The standard deduction for elderly and disabled families is raised from $400 to $725 per year and the deduction for dependents is raised from $480 to $500 per year. The deductions will be adjusted for inflation by $25 increments, hereafter.
Deductions for childcare expenses, child and spousal support are eliminated. The 3% of net income for calculating medical and handicapped assistance deductions is raised to 10% of net yearly income.
Calculating the amount of income allows for the exemption of income of a minor and adult dependents that are full time students and exempts from total income calculations any grants-in-aid of scholarship amounts for tuition or books.
Calculating rental assistance based on assets and income is revised. Families would be prohibited from assistance if they have more than $100,000 in net assets or own a residence suitable for occupancy but homeownership equity accounts and family self-sufficiency accounts, personal property, retirement and education savings accounts and amounts from some disability lawsuits would not be counted.
Vouchers may be used for a down payment for a first-time home purchase as a one-time grant and may not exceed $10,000 for families that have been receiving vouchers for at least a year. Vouchers can be used for the full cost of purchasing a manufactured homes sited on leased land. The voucher may be used for the lease cost plus monthly home purchase costs including property taxes, insurance and tenant-paid utilities.
The PHA’s are authorized to report rental payment history of voucher tenants to credit reporting agencies providing the tenant agrees to do so.
HUD is required to assess the performance of PHAs based on quality of units assisted, extent of utilization of allocated funds, timeliness and accuracy of reporting to HUD, effectiveness in carrying out policies to achieve deconcentration of poverty, reasonableness of rent burdens, accurate rent calculations and subsidy payments, effectiveness in carrying out family self-sufficiency activities, timeliness of actions related to landlord participation and other factors.
Moving to Work is the new name for Housing Innovation Program. The newly renamed program authorizes public housing agencies to undertake innovative housing proposals, with the purpose of identifying models and policies that might be extended to all housing agencies. A program to employ people with significant disabilities would benefit from a demonstration program.
Amendments The bill was amended to require that applicants meet criteria regarding domestic violence provisions thereby assuring that the housing is a safe haven for abused spouses. The amendment that required section 8 participants to leave the program after 7 years with the exception of the elderly, disabled and those under extreme financial hardship failed. Another amendment would require that after 7 years all adult members of the household must perform 20 hours of work each week with the exception of the elderly, disabled and those who can not access child care also failed.
Sponsor: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA-35th) Vote: The bill passed the House 333 to 83 July 12, 2007 (RC 629). The motion to recommit was agreed to 233 to 186 RC 628 Cost to the taxpayers: “CBO estimates that implementing this legislation would have a net cost of $2.4 billion over the 2008-2012 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts.” The Motion to Recommit the bill with Instructions-"The instructions contained in the motion seek to require the bill to be reported back to the House forthwith with an amendment inserting a new section pertaining to acceptable identification requirement." The motion to recommit was agreed to 233 to 186 RC 628
Earmark Certification: H.R. 1851 does not contain any congressional earmarks, limited tax benefits, or limited tariff benefits as defined in clause 9 of rule XXI. ## All Rights Reserved. © 2007 TheWeekInCongress.com(TM) No reproduction, language translation or distribution without written permission from TheWeekInCongress.com.(TM)
MORE INFORMATION
ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF HON. SPENCER BACHUS, HON. JUDY BIGGERT, AND HON. GARY MILLERH.R. 1851, the Section 8 Voucher Reform Act of 2007 (SEVRA), makes a number of important improvements to the Section 8 program to reform and simplify regulations for local public housing agencies while preserving essential tenant protections. The Section 8 housing voucher program is the nation's largest low-income housing assistance program helping over 2 million low-income households, elderly and disabled secure affordable modest housing in the private market. The program has grown to replace public housing as the primary tool for subsidizing the housing costs of low-income families. Through this program, the Department of Housing and Development (HUD) provides portable subsidies to individuals who seek rental housing from qualified and approved owners (tenant-based), and provides subsidies to private property owners who set aside some or all of their units for low-income families (project-based). The Section 8 program began in 1974, primarily as a project-based rental assistance program. However, by the mid-1980s, project-based assistance came under criticism for being too costly and for concentrating poor families in high-poverty areas. Consequently, in 1983, Congress stopped providing new project-based Section 8 contracts and created vouchers as a new form of assistance. Today, vouchers are the primary tool of assistance provided under Section 8, although over 1 million units still receive project-based assistance under their original contracts or renewals of those contracts. Over the years, the cost of the housing choice voucher has continued to increase and today consumes over 60 percent of HUD's budget. These cost increases can be attributed to a number of factors, not the least of which is the structure of the benefit. The value of a voucher is calculated as roughly the difference between rents in a community and 30 percent of participating households' incomes. In recent years, rents have been rising faster than incomes, which, along with federal policy changes designed to expand household choice and alleviate poverty, have driven up the cost of a voucher and therefore the cost of the program. This rate of increase, combined with an extremely complicated set of laws and rules that govern the voucher program, limits the program's effectiveness for families, many of whom must wait years to receive any help from their local housing authorities. In addition, the rising cost of this program has begun to impact funding for other key housing programs. In fact, for the first time in 2004, HUD programs such as Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and HOME were forced to absorb budget cuts to pay for funding the Housing Choice Voucher program. In an effort to deal with the rising cost of the Section 8 voucher program, the Administration has made several different reform proposals. In its FY 2004 budget, the Administration proposed a state-run block grant model, entitled `Housing Assistance for Needy' (HANF). The Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity held a series of hearings on this proposal, but in the end, no legislative action was taken. In 2005, the Administration proposed a different approach. Instead of a block grant to the states, the Administration's Flexible Voucher Program (FVP) envisioned a dollar-based grant program to be administered by the Public Housing Authorities (PHAs). The Flexible Voucher Program was not considered by the 108th Congress; however, the Appropriations Committee did include provisions in the 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act moving the program from a unit-based program to a dollar-based program. Prior to 2004, PHAs were funded on a unit-basis. Their budgets were determined based on the number of vouchers they were allocated to administer at their actual costs. In FY 2004, the formula was changed to fund PHAs based on the number of vouchers they were expected to lease at a fixed cost. In FY 2005, the formula was changed again and PHAs were funded based on 2004 May-July VMS data, inflated for 2005 and prorated to 96 percent. In addition, the allocation of funds in FY 2005 was based on a three-month period in 2004 (May-July), which may have been a low-point for some PHAs' budgets. The result is that some PHAs receive more than they can utilize and others not enough. To address this problem, on February 15, 2007, as part of the Continuing Resolution (P.L. 110-5), Congress reverted back to a funding formula based on actual costs and utilization. H.R. 1851 seeks to codify many of the changes made in the Continuing Resolution, and as with any funding formula change, there are winners and losers under the newly enacted funding mechanism. The fact that the funding formula has been repeatedly changed over the last several years has made it difficult for PHAs to administer their voucher programs and to plan for the future. We support a funding formula that will be reasonable, fair and predictable. We support a formula that will provide PHAs the certainty they need to effectively and efficiently provide affordable housing to low-income families. Finally, we support a funding formula that includes incentives for agencies to improve their performance and to serve the maximum number of families in need. While we appreciate the spirit of the funding formula provisions included in H.R. 1851, we would like to see additional changes to the funding formula section that will help move us closer to achieving the above-mentioned goals. It is critical to make improvements in the delivery of housing assistance to families in need. We believe this can be achieved by providing flexibility to local public housing authorities (PHAs) while holding them accountable for results. Such flexibility would enable PHAs to tailor and manage their programs to the needs of the families they serve in the local community instead of through a one-size-fits-all approach. This is important not only philosophically, but practically, because we face a situation of growing waiting lists for Section 8 vouchers without the resources to serve everyone. We need to move current Section 8 recipients to self-sufficiency so that we can provide a similar helping hand to those who have patiently waited, in some cases for almost ten years, for assistance. The answer is not necessarily to increase funding. Rather, the answer is to allow PHAs to be innovative with the money they have, to be efficient and to help as many people in need as possible move through the program. Our ultimate aim should not necessarily be to expand this program, but instead to reform it to allow PHAs to serve more people. While H.R. 1852 does not provide for as much flexibility as we believe is needed to achieve this goal, we are pleased that the bill increases the number of PHAs allowed to enjoy such flexibility under the Moving to Work (MTW) program, which has allowed a small group of PHAs to create locally based housing programs outside of HUD's one-size-fits-all regulations. The MTW program has enabled PHAs to create jobs for residents, add affordable housing stock, and help families build savings. The efforts of PHAs, which include incentives to gain employment, mixing of fund sources, relief from obsolete regulatory requirements, and effective use of funding for development and homeownership, have been successful in improving housing stock and serving more families by helping recipients achieve self-sufficiency. Currently, only 24 of the more than 3,000 PHAs nationwide are able to participate in the MTW program. H.R. 1852 renames the Moving to Work program as the Housing Innovation Program (HIP) and increases the number of PHAs allowed to participate. The bill also directs HUD to establish performance standards for evaluating HIP agency results, taking into account variation in practice according to each local design. The evaluation is intended to be limited to assessing which policies and programs work under HIP, since having a one-size-fits-all performance standard system would undermine the flexibility of the program. Evaluation standards are tied to the specific performance goals set by the local agency. The strategies implemented by the PHAs participating in HIP can serve as examples of innovative ways to improve the program in the future to ensure that our limited federal resources may be used to help all of those who need it. With this performance evaluation, our goal is to be able to take away best practices for reform of the Section 8 program. In addition, we are pleased that the bill enhances HUD's Family Self-Sufficiency Act (FSS) program by providing housing authorities with consistent coordinator funding. Housing authorities can then help more individuals move from public assistance to being self-sufficient homeowners. The legislation also includes performance measures, data collection, and an evaluation so that housing authorities are well-equipped and encouraged to operate effective FSS programs and can help more individuals. We are hopeful that the innovation that can be produced through HIP and FSS will demonstrate ways to truly reform Section 8 so we can serve more people efficiently and help move them to self-sufficiency. We look forward to working with the Chairs of the
Committee on Financial Services and the Subcommittee on Housing and
Community Opportunities to fine-tune the provisions of H.R. 1851 prior to
this legislation being considered on the House floor. H.R. 1851 includes
improvements that will help make the Section 8 program more efficient and
effective. By working together in a bipartisan manner, we can make this
legislation better serve low-income families and communities across the
country.
AMENDMENTS 1.
H.AMDT.493 to
H.R.1851 An amendment numbered 1 printed in House Report 110-227 to
include increased rent structure flexibility while maintaining
affordability requirements, an increase up to 12.5% in first year
permitted housing agency voucher reserves, provisions spelling out HUD
responsibilities with respect to access to HUD programs for persons with
Limited English Proficiency, modifications to voucher inspection
requirements, and changes to the Housing Innovation Program. 2.
H.AMDT.494 to
H.R.1851 An amendment numbered 2 printed in House Report 110-227 to
require that public housing agencies selected for participation in the
Housing Innovation Program must comply with voucher and public housing
domestic violence provisions from the Violence Against Women Act. 3.
H.AMDT.495 to
H.R.1851 An amendment numbered 3 printed in House Report 110-227 to
impose a 7-year time limit on participation in the Section 8 program. The
amendment excludes the elderly and disabled from this requirement. In
addition, the amendment provides for a hardship exception. 4.
H.AMDT.496 to
H.R.1851 An amendment numbered 4 printed in House Report 110-227 to
make certain low-income tenants of the Heritage Apartments in Malden,
Massachusetts eligible for enhanced housing vouchers after prepayment of a
HUD mortgage and subsequent ownership transfer of the property without HUD
restrictions that may jeopardize the housing affordability. The second
part of the amendment would allow for the transfer of Section 8 Housing
Assistance Payment (HAP) contracts in Columbus, Ohio in the University
District and in Cincinnati, Ohio in the Over-the-Rhine Community. 5.
H.AMDT.497 to
H.R.1851 An amendment numbered 5 printed in House Report 110-227 to
strike the authorization of appropriations for the creation of 20,000 new
vouchers each year for years FY 2008 through FY 2012. 6.
H.AMDT.498 to
H.R.1851 An amendment numbered 6 printed in House Report 110-227 to
require that all adults in a household receiving Section 8 tenant
assistance for more than 7 consecutive years must perform 20 hours per
week of approved `work activities.' Exemptions are provided for senior
citizens, the disabled, those already exempt from TANF work requirements,
and those who cannot access child care. 7.
H.AMDT.499 to
H.R.1851
## All Rights Reserved. © 2007 TheWeekInCongress.com.(TM) No reproduction, language translation or distribution without written permission from TheWeekInCongress.com.(TM)
|
|
||||||||||||||
