Mr. President, today I am introducing the Property Improvement and Manufactured Housing Loan Modernization Act with Senator Lummis. Our bipartisan bill would help more families purchase an affordable…
Mr. President, today I am introducing the Property Improvement and Manufactured Housing Loan Modernization Act with Senator Lummis. Our bipartisan bill would help more families purchase an affordable home and maintain our housing supply by strengthening the Federal Housing Administration, FHA, Title I Loan Program.
Like its better known title II sister program, FHA Title I expands access to housing and boosts affordability for families by insuring private market loans. However, title I is targeted towards two underserved portions of our housing market--manufactured homes and property improvement.
For decades, title I has enabled families to access stable, affordable housing, while also helping maintain our Nation's housing stock. Indeed, manufactured homes are the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country, and property improvement loans help prevent more single-family homes and apartments from falling into disrepair and out of our housing supply.
These loans should be an important tool in helping to close our nationwide housing shortage, which the Brookings Institution estimates at nearly 5 million homes. However, outdated loan limits and statutory restrictions have turned title I from an effective program into a missed opportunity.
From the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, lenders offered 15,000 to 25,000 title I manufactured home loans each year. But in 2021, only three loans were issued. Similarly, lenders have gone from making more than 70,000 title I property improvement loans annually in the 1990s to making fewer than 1,000 in 2022. That is a 99-percent drop in loan volume or in other words, as many as 99,000 fewer homes being bought, preserved, and included in our housing stock each year.
The Property Improvement and Manufactured Housing Loan Modernization Act would refurbish title I and return it to our housing toolbox. It would expand loan limits and terms for all title I loans--making the program fit market demand and needs. Perhaps more importantly, the bill would finally allow FHA to index property improvement loans for inflation and expand the data it uses to set manufactured home loan limits, ensuring title I will remain a crucial tool as home costs rise in future years.
Finally, our legislation makes accessible dwelling units, ADUs, which are small housing units added to a single-family property, eligible for title I financing. This small addition to title I will make the program an even more powerful home-creation program than it was during its prior peak years and will particularly help families who want to provide a safe, comfortable place for aging parents or young adult children to live.
Collectively, these improvements would help more families own a home, remain in homes they have spent decades in, and find an affordable place to live. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this bill and support its passage.
Mr. President, I am pleased to join Senator Collins and Senators Van Hollen, Cortez Masto, Smith, and Klobuchar in introducing legislation that would permanently reauthorize the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Council or USICH.
The Council was established during the Reagan administration as part of the landmark McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987. Over the last three and a half decades, it has led and coordinated the Federal Government's response to homelessness. In 2009, the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing, HEARTH, Act, which I authored along with Senator Collins, expanded the Council's role, allowing it to work with public, nonprofit, and private stakeholders to develop a national strategic plan to end homelessness. Despite its minimal budget and small staff, the Council has helped guide Federal, State, and local stakeholders in deploying their resources in a smart, effective, and coordinated fashion. The results have been evident. In the decade after USICH published its first plan, overall homelessness declined 9 percent. Family and veteran homelessness declined significantly, as well, with the total numbers dropping nearly 30 percent and 50 percent respectively. In fact, the Council has been able to help 85 communities and 3 States effectively end veteran homelessness.
Despite these successes, homelessness has persisted, and skyrocketing housing prices since 2020 have brought a new surge in homelessness. The Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress found that, ``[o]n a single night in January 2024, 771,480 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States.'' This is a record number of Americans experiencing homelessness since the count began. The face of homelessness--which individuals lack a safe, stable home--is also changing. Families with children had the largest increase in homelessness from 2023 to 2024. Indeed, nearly 150,000 children were experiencing homelessness on a single night last year. This staggering increase in homelessness is happening across the country.
USICH helps us meet this challenge by guiding how its 19 Federal member Agencies deploy and leverage their resources with non-Federal partners to help communities effectively address homelessness. We know that smart, coordinated investments in programs that address homelessness and increase affordable housing pay additional dividends. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has found that taxpayers pay an average of $35,578 per year on each chronically homeless individual, while ``based on 22 different studies from across the country, providing permanent supportive housing to chronically homeless people creates net savings of $4,800 per person per year, through reduced spending on jails, hospitals, shelters, and other emergency services.'' In short, helping people avoid homelessness not only helps them, it also saves taxpayers money. USICH's coordinating work helps make our investments to address homelessness more informed and more effective.
Indeed, the Council continues to prove that the government can work and save money in the process. I thank HousingWorks RI for its support, and I urge my colleagues to join us in permanently authorizing USICH.
Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Helping More Families Save Act with Senator Britt. This bipartisan legislation would help more families in HUD-assisted housing build savings and improve their financial security by creating a pilot program for Family Self- Sufficiency, FSS, universal escrow accounts.
The FSS Program was established under the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990 to help low-income families boost savings and improve their professional, educational, and financial
standing. In 2018, I worked with then-Senator Roy Blunt to expand the program to cover more households. Today, millions of public housing residents, Housing Choice Voucher Program participants, and residents of project-based rental assistance, PBRA, housing are eligible for FSS.
FSS provides two key tools for its participants. First, households work with FSS coordinators to develop long-term financial, professional, or educational goals. FSS coordinators also help connect participants with resources, training, and employment opportunities. Second, the program encourages FSS families to save by providing them with an interest-bearing escrow account. Participants who increase their incomes deposit a portion of their additional earnings into their escrow account instead of paying higher rent, as is typically required under federally subsidized housing programs. Upon graduation from the Program, families can use their escrowed savings to pay for job-related expenses, move to private market housing, buy a home, or save for the future.
After more than 30 years, FSS has become a proven financial independence program. For example, in 2022, 34 percent of FSS graduates no longer needed Federal rental assistance within 1 year of leaving FSS, and nearly 10 percent of graduates were ultimately able to purchase their own home. On average, FSS participants with escrow savings graduated from the program with approximately $10,000 in their accounts. This is no small sum, and it helps HUD-assisted families strengthen their financial stability and move towards greater economic independence.
Despite the program's success and broad eligibility, program participation was effectively capped at about 70,000 enrollees in 2022 simply due to a lack of Federal funding for the required FSS coordinators.
The Helping More Families Save Act would help more Americans access the program by creating a new universal escrow pilot. Under the bill, public housing agencies, PHAs, and PBRA property owners could offer 5,000 additional households escrow accounts identical to those under the current FSS Program without having to wait for an FSS coordinator to be funded by the Federal Government. PHA and PBRA property owners would not be required to offer coordinator services to these new participants, although we expect many will work to offer counseling and support on their own or with outside partners. Moreover, we expect that this pilot will show that those enrolled in the program will be successful and make financially sound decisions.
Our pilot program would help more low-income families improve their financial security, achieve economic independence, and possibly even purchase their own homes, all with minimal cost to the Federal Government.
This is a commonsense, bipartisan proposal that would help more Americans pull themselves out of poverty. It is a win for families, the Federal budget, and our economy. I thank Senator Britt for coleading this legislation and Compass Working Capital and LISC for their support. I urge our colleagues to cosponsor the Helping More Families Save Act and support its passage.
