As summer begins to wane, kids return to school and in a similar vein, Congress returns to Washington from their month-long summer work period, there are several pending issues on their agenda and ours.
First, we are very pleased with the continued strong bipartisan, bicameral support for the AHCIA. As of August 22nd the House bill (HR.3238) has 160 bipartisan cosponsors evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and the Senate bill (S.1557) has 28 cosponsors also evenly divided between the parties. This is significant progress as we work toward a bipartisan majority (218) in the House which will help us position provisions of the AHCIA for inclusion in a tax vehicle sometime this year. When you view the legislative calendar for Congress, you see that there are not a lot of legislative days left in 2023. The House is only scheduled to be in session another 40 days once they return on September 12th, so it is important we focus on getting the House cosponsorship of the AHCIA to 218 Members expeditiously.
As part of our advocacy efforts for the AHCIA through the ACTION campaign, we are teaming up with the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and Mayors & CEO’s for U.S. Housing Investment to produce a letter to Congressional leadership urging action on the AHCIA this year. We hope you will join in this effort by getting your local mayors and elected officials to sign-on to the letter by September 7th.
Of greater concern at the present time is the prospect of a government shutdown on October 1st. The House has only passed one of the 12 appropriation bills and there does not seem to be a consensus within the House Republican conference on many of the remaining bills. This is before they even try to negotiate with House Democrats or the Senate, which appears to be ready to pass the appropriations bills in their chamber. Speaker McCarthy has suggested the need for a short-term continuing resolution (CR) to get the negotiations past October 1st, but conservative members of his conference have indicated they will not support any CR in the House, thus the growing possibility the government will not be able to operate after the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30th. We are hopeful any shutdown will be short-lived, and the final FY 2024 budget will be more in line with the bills passed out of the Senate appropriations subcommittees, as these reflect the agreement between President Biden and Speaker McCarthy when they negotiated the debt ceiling. This agreement, while constituting a cut to all but the Pentagon budget, would fund the government at FY 2023 levels with some other resources repurposed to maintain or increase funding in some programs.
We have grave concerns about the funding levels for HUD in both the House and Senate bills and have been working with the appropriators to find ways to maintain funding for both PBRA and tenant-based vouchers. It is possible there will be significant cuts to other HUD programs to maintain these funding levels.
We also continue our efforts to address the growing economic hurdle of finding affordable insurance coverage. The industry is fully engaged in this effort and as I noted in my previous update, we have engaged the administration and Congressional leaders on the issue. We continue to make progress in educating members and working toward a set of viable solutions both at the regulatory level and potential legislative fixes that would address availability and cost. The National Leased Housing Association has put a survey in the field which we encourage anyone with a portfolio that deals with insurance complete.
The deadline for completion of the survey is September 15, 2023. Please use the survey monkey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NLHA_InsuranceCosts2023 to complete the survey. You may also use this PDF to view the survey and prepare your responses
Finally, members of CHC and the larger California housing community have been through so much this summer with the passing of good friends and the extreme weather. Your friends and colleagues in the industry are there with you in spirit and so appreciate all you do despite these challenges to support efforts to increase housing production.
Thank you sincerely.
David Gasson