Responding to a report released today by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that showed more than 184,000 families could be at risk of losing housing as a result of the Bush Administration's underfunding of the housing voucher program, Senators Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD), Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), and Jack Reed (D-RI) urged the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to immediately seek additional funding to avoid the possibility of people becoming homeless.

The housing voucher program (Section 8) is the largest federal low-income housing assistance program. Families use vouchers to rent modestly-priced apartments in the private market. Typically, a family pays 30 percent of its income for rent and utilities, and the voucher covers the rest.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities examined data collected by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in April 2003 from state and local housing agencies that administer nearly all housing vouchers and found that "the Administration's budget request for fiscal year 2004 is inadequate to fund all housing vouchers likely to be in use when the fiscal year starts in October 2003."

The analysis shows that "approximately 184,000 vouchers in use serving low-income families at the beginning of the fiscal year likely will not be funded. Such a reduction would be unprecedented in the history of the voucher program. Efforts to avoid this problem would be greatly facilitated if the Administration, using this more recent data, submitted a budget amendment to Congress requesting the necessary funds."

The three Senators, all of whom have jurisdiction over federal housing programs, wrote to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez in response to the findings of the report saying, "We are now faced with a dire situation in the upcoming fiscal year - an estimated shortfall of over $1.25 billion in funding for vouchers that will be use in the marketplace helping families to pay their rents. This means, if additional funding is not provided, over 180,000 families will be at risk of losing their homes."

The Senators noted in their letter to Martinez that "On January 27, 2003, you reiterated your commitment to ending homelessness and said you were working to 'not only help end chronic homelessness on the streets of America, but to prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place.' Unfortunately, the budget request submitted to Congress works against this goal by putting tens of thousands of children and their parents at risk of losing their housing and becoming homeless."

Action on the appropriation bills funding the Department of Housing and Urban Development is expected in the House of Representatives during the week of July 14.

A copy of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report can be obtained at www.cbpp.org/7-11-03hous.htm; or www.cbpp.org/7-11-03hous.pdf.

A copy of the Senators' letter to Secretary Martinez may be viewed here.

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