Disabled Veterans Housing Support Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 224) to amend section 102(a)(20) of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 to require the exclusion of service- connected disability compensation when determining whether a person is a person of low and moderate income, a person of low income, or a person of moderate income, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 224, the Disabled Veterans Housing Support Act, introduced by my good friend from Texas, Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz.

It has been said that what the American people desire is not bigger government but a much better and more effective government. The reforms proposed in this bill would accomplish just that. This bill would reform a program meant to assist those in need, HUD's, Housing and Urban Development's, Community Development Block Grant program. This includes helping our Nation's low-income veterans with the housing challenges that many of them face across our Nation. However, the bureaucratic obstacles at HUD know no bounds.

Mr. Speaker, today, veterans are being turned away from this very positive CDBG program. How is that? The formula HUD tells communities to use to see if veterans qualify as low income and are therefore eligible to participate in the CDBG program counts service-connected disability compensation as income, whereas other government programs correctly do not.

The result has been, in some places, especially in our most rural areas, communities have to tell low-income, disabled veterans they are too wealthy to qualify for help.

Truly, Mr. Speaker, you cannot make this up.

Excluding low-income veterans because they are disabled is not what Congress intended for communities to take action on by receiving CDBG funds. Of course, HUD understands this exclusion has been happening. Yet, rather than fix the issue by providing clear rules on how to calculate the income of disabled veterans, the Biden administration kept saying that it was someone else's problem.

Mr. Speaker, that ends today with this good bill.

This bill would reform CDBG's income calculation formula, telling HUD, in no uncertain terms, to stop including service-connected disability compensation as income.

Fixing programmatic flaws and bureaucratic obstacles is exactly what the American people have sent these Members to this House floor to do. It is unfortunate that HUD has had several opportunities to fix its flawed guidance without Congress, but it has refused to act even with multiple letters from our Financial Services Committee.

This commonsense fix, which passed out of the committee with strong bipartisan support and on suspension in this House during the previous Congress, ensures that disabled veterans who have served our Nation with honor receive the benefits that they have earned and deserved. Under the leadership of Representative De La Cruz, we will ensure that HUD stops excluding our Nation's heroes.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Vargas from California, for his strong support of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz), who is the lead sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nunn).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 224 as put forward by the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz). She has heard strong support on a bipartisan basis on both sides of the aisle from our friends, Mr. Vargas and Mr. Sherman in the minority, and Mr. Nunn in the majority.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I join with the gentleman in his comments about how we need to protect our veterans from the ill-considered actions of President Trump and, I was about to say Secretary Musk, whatever he is. I, of course, join with Mr. Vargas in welcoming our new chair of the Financial Services Committee.

I want to focus on the bill at hand, actually two bills at hand. We are dealing with this bill now and about four other bills will go by, and then we will deal with the companion legislation.

Ms. De La Cruz is the chief Republican on my bill, which is going to come up in what I hope will be only 30 or 40 minutes. I am the chief Democrat on her bill.

Mr. Speaker, Congress has created various Federal programs to help those who are housing insecure, particularly veterans. Of course, to qualify for those programs, Mr. Speaker, you have to have an income under a certain threshold, so we have to define what is income. In particular, we have to ask: Do disability benefits paid by the VA count as income which might put a veteran over the threshold and deny the veteran participation in the housing benefits?

I think it should not for a number of reasons. First, we don't want disabled American veterans who are homeless or near homeless to be excluded from homeless programs. Second, the Internal Revenue Code already recognizes that disability benefits paid to veterans should not be considered income.

At the urging of many of us--I was particularly strong on this--the Department of Housing and Urban Development has reached the same conclusion, at least from now, but here in Washington, it is not always good to just rely on an agency determination. A simple stroke of a Sharpie can change it one way or the other, now or in 4 years. What you want, Mr. Speaker, is legislation because that is near permanent.

Mr. Speaker, we have statutory provisions that make it clear that disability benefits paid by the VA should not be included in determining eligibility for veterans' housing. There is a reason for that, Mr. Speaker, and that is that you ordinarily think that if two people have the same income, then they are living at the same level. That is not true if you are a disabled veteran because you have the additional difficulties and the additional expenses of being disabled.

A veteran may have to pay for a health aide. The veteran can't get across town to take advantage of a sale. He or she is going to have a variety of additional costs because they are disabled, and that is what their disability benefit pays for, those additional costs. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have a standard of living that includes their disability payment.

Now, we deal with Congresswoman De La Cruz's bill, which I strongly support. I hope it will pass unanimously in the next few minutes. This deals with the HUD Community Development Block Grant program. As I said, my legislation, which will come up hopefully not too long from now, deals with a different HUD program.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support both bills. They both have no score, so this doesn't cost the Federal Government any money.

Mr. Speaker, both bills are overwhelmingly supported by veterans organizations, including the VFW, Vietnam Veterans of America, The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, U.S.VETS, and Black Veterans Empowerment Council.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill and its companion legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 224, the Disabled Veterans Housing Support Act, sponsored by Representative De La Cruz.

While I appreciate Ms. De La Cruz's intention to better serve our veterans who have served this country, it is ironic that this bill seeks to improve a program that the Trump administration has already threatened to dismantle through an illegal funding freeze.

Specifically, the Trump administration and Musk's illegal DOGE unit continue to threaten to cut programs and

freeze Federal funding that has already gone out the door, including funds meant to serve veterans. In fact, committee staff continue to hear that some CDBG grantees remain locked out of their payment systems and are therefore unable to access Federal funds authorized by Congress. These are funds that are meant to help low-income and moderate-income communities, including disabled veterans, the very people this bill claims to want to help.

If Republicans are concerned about housing upgrades for disabled veterans who honorably served this Nation, then they should find the honor and courage to stop the Trump administration's and the billionaire boy's illegal actions that are harming our Nation's veterans, whether it is stealing private Federal data on millions of Americans or stealing the funding that would otherwise help a disabled veteran upgrade their home to make it more accessible and livable.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stand up for disabled veterans and oppose co-president Musk's illegal takeover, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I believe this is the first time the gentleman from Arkansas has been presenting as the chairman, and I want to say that, as a friend, I am very proud of the gentleman, and it is good to see him as chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), who is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Capital Markets.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close if the gentleman from Arkansas has no further speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, as the Trump administration continues its attack on the poor, the homeless, and on federally funded assistance with no Republicans stepping up to provide a check and balance on an illegal government takeover, House Democrats cannot sit here and have an honest debate about this policy.

What is more, the Trump administration has vowed to put more of America's housing in the hands of big investors and private equity firms.

The data shows what happens when private investors get their hands on more housing: Costs and junk fees go up, maintenance gets deferred, and evictions go up.

That is why I support this bill, most certainly. I think it goes the other way.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 224, the Disabled Veterans Housing Support Act.

Veterans, particularly disabled veterans, have made extraordinary sacrifices for our Nation, and it is simply unacceptable that those who selflessly defended our freedoms are met with bureaucratic red tape when they return home.

Government overregulation should never stand in the way of veterans' ability to receive the help they need. That is what this legislation will fix.

Due to inconsistencies in the way income eligibility is determined for Community Development Block Grant assistance, a veteran could be disqualified simply because their service-connected disability compensation is counted as income in one case but excluded in another. This simply doesn't make sense.

This is the result of HUD currently allowing multiple different definitions of income for CDBG assistance, some of which count service- connected disability received from the VA as income while one does not. To put it more simply, the same veteran who may have been disqualified for assistance could very well be eligible if the grantee would only have used the proper definition of income.

This legislation will create a standard and ensure VA service- connected disability income is always excluded from income calculations when determining eligibility for CDBG assistance.

By passing this bipartisan legislation, we are correcting an issue that HUD has failed to address. Further, we will require a report from the GAO to identify any additional inconsistencies in the treatment of service-connected disability income within housing programs.

Last Congress, I was proud to see this legislation garner bipartisan support in the Financial Services Committee and pass out of this House as recently as this past December. We will continue to build on this progress to ensure federally funded programs best serve our veterans and do not penalize them for the benefits that they have earned.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the bipartisan cosponsors for this legislation, including Congressman Brad Sherman, and I urge my colleagues to join me and vote in favor of H.R. 224.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz) for bringing this bill forward, the Disabled Veterans Housing Support Act, which I am proud to co-lead as a bipartisan sponsor on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, our country is facing a housing shortage crisis, and our veterans are hit the hardest, like the Vietnam veterans I spoke to in Bloomfield,

Iowa, who highlighted their lack of affordable quality housing.

Nearly 22 percent of all of Iowa's disabled veterans are finding it a challenge not only to find affordable housing but are also being put in a position where they can no longer gain access.

Mr. Speaker, no more. As a 20-year Air Force veteran, it pains me to see my fellow servicemen and -women literally on the streets in the heart of the heartland.

I have heard directly from our veterans services officers, and this is one of their top concerns. Ms. De La Cruz' bill takes a positive step forward in helping more of our veterans access the resources they need to get into affordable housing. It ensures disability payments do not restrict their access to housing, whether they are in urban, suburban, or rural America.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to take up this bipartisan call and support our veterans who need help now, particularly those who have given their all and served in a disabled capacity but have still earned the respect to live in affordable housing.