In mid-January, President Biden confirmed a new strategy to advance the Build Back Better Act by scaling it down to only include components that will be supported by all Senate Democrats. At the moment, we are not clear whether housing funding is among the priorities for a reformulated reconciliation bill.
Parts of the bill that do not make it into a scaled back version could be repackaged into stand-alone bills, but these bills would have very low chance of passage, as they would require bipartisan support. A scaled back version of Build Back Better passed through the reconciliation process would require approval by a simple majority.
It is critical to urge our members of Congress to protect and advance the bill’s historic investments in rental assistance, public housing, and the Housing Trust Fund as part of any reconciliation bill that advances.
The House-passed Build Back Better Act includes the largest single investment in quality, affordable, accessible homes for the country’s lowest-income people in history:
- $25 billion to expand rental assistance to more than 300,000 households
- $65 billion to preserve public housing for its 2.5 million residents
- $15 billion for the national Housing Trust Fund to build and preserve over 150,000 affordable, accessible homes for households with the lowest incomes
- $10 billion in down payment assistance for first generation homebuyers
- Establishing a Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit targeted to affordable homes for sale in communities where the cost of building or rehabilitating is greater than what people in the neighborhood can afford
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