This week the House released three appropriations bills—Transportation-HUD, Labor-Health and Human Services, and Agriculture—that outline how much funding sub-committee Representatives would like Habitat’s priority federal programs to receive in the fiscal year 18 budget.
This was Congress’ first official response to the President’s budget request, which proposed eliminating every single program that supports Habitat’s work. Since the release of the budget request, Habitat has directed its advocacy to Congress because Members ultimately hold the purse strings on the future funding of SHOP, HOME, CDBG, Section 4, USDA 502 and 504, and National Service.
The House appropriations bills contained mixed news for Habitat’s legislative priorities, but overall the outcome was better than expected. For our housing programs, there was good news for SHOP, which was level funded at $10 million. Section 4 received a small cut of $5 million. The largest cuts went to CDBG and HOME, which were both slashed by $100 million.
National Service got good news with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) receiving level funding ($1.03 billion). This is very encouraging for the future of the AmeriCorps State and National and VISTA programs.
The following chart gives an outline of how much funding each program received:
This week represented an important milestone in Habitat’s advocacy this year, and the funding numbers illustrate the amazing work you’ve done over the last several months–building on years of hard work to cultivate champions and build bipartisan support for Habitat and our programs.
Between now and mid-September, the Senate will release its appropriations bills, which will give a more complete picture of where funding proposals stand for all of our issues in Congress.
Therefore we still need all of you to keep your advocacy strong, especially over the next few months, because more key decisions will be made around the budget, and the success we’ve accomplished thus far is a direct result of your advocacy efforts. Please click the link below to tell Congress to support the programs that support Habitat for Humanity!
TAKE ACTION NOW: CLICK HERE TO CONTACT CONGRESS
Thank you for your continued support of these programs—it is making a difference and we need you to keep it up!
Larry Peterson
Executive Director, Habitat for Humanity of Springfield, MO
