What Do the House Appropriations Bills Mean for Healthy Housing?

by Sarah Goodwin

It’s summer in Washington, DC, and that means two things. First: Wow, it’s been hot here. (If you, like those of us in the greater Washington area, have been dealing with some high temperatures over the past few weeks, you may be interested in NCHH’s extreme heat pages).

Second: Appropriations season has begun.

A little background if you do not have the pleasure of regularly following the appropriations process: Every year, Congress spends the beginning of the summer introducing the appropriations bills for the coming fiscal year (which begins October 1) and passing them through subcommittees, the full appropriations committees, and then through the House and Senate floors. In theory, anyway—Congress hasn’t passed all of the required bills by October 1 since I was literally one year old. These days, what usually happens is that the deadline approaches with some or all of the 12 bills not finished, so Congress passes a continuing resolution to keep the government open while negotiations continue. The bills are often grouped together into a large omnibus bill, which is frequently passed after the beginning of the fiscal year. For example, the current funding levels, for FY24, weren’t finalized until this past March!

While we’ve started the appropriations process, it’s probably fair to say that it will be a while before we have final FY25 numbers passed through Congress and signed into law, especially since the elections this fall mean that congressmembers will be spending a significant amount of time on the campaign trail rather than in DC.

So, with all that context, where are we so far? Well, the House has released their appropriations bills and the accompanying reports, passing the last of them through the full committee on July 10. Here’s what the House bills include for the healthy housing programs that we track.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

This bill includes $335 million for HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes (OLHCHH). This is a small cut from last year’s funding. Since this office includes several different programs, here’s what the breakdown looks like, with a comparison to last year’s funding:

		FY24	House FY25
Total		$345 million	$335 million
Lead hazard control grants		$200 million	$200 million
Healthy homes activities (note that not all the items under this subcategory get broken out with specific amounts; e.g., amounts not specified below may help funding the Healthy Homes Supplemental and Healthy Homes Production Grants)		$140 million	$130 million
	Healthy homes and weatherization cooperation demonstration grants	$5 million	—
	Aging in place grants	$30 million	—
	Financing pilot (this would provide funds for the National Lead Safe and Healthy Homes Fund, which you can read more about here)	—	$10 million
Technical studies		$3 million	$5 million
	Transfer to PDR	$2 million	$2 million
Radon in Public Housing		$2 million	—

 

The bill rescinds $553.6 million in prior-year unspent funds.

In the president’s budget, released earlier this year, HUD proposed to shift 80% of the lead grants through this office to a formula funding model. This bill notably does not recommend this change.

The bill report includes the following items of interest*:

• Impacts of indoor mold.—Indoor mold exposure impacts individuals living in all types of housing. HUD is encouraged to study the health effects of indoor mold using up-to-date, peer-reviewed literature. PD&R, in consultation with the Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes, is urged to share these findings with the relevant offices within HUD and with stakeholders upon completion of this review.¹
• Asbestos in housing.—The Committee recognizes the potential impacts of building materials which contain asbestos on an individual’s health and safety. The Secretary of HUD is encouraged to engage regularly with the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Secretary of the Department of HHS to discuss potential strategies to mitigate the harms of building materials in homes that contain asbestos.
• Improving the lead grant application process.—In line with the directive in P.L. 118–42, the Committee directs HUD to continue to conduct outreach and improve its NOFOs to encourage more grantees to apply, especially those that may not have access to professional grant writers, such as smaller and more rural communities. Additionally, HUD shall continue to clearly state in its NOFOs that an application may include nonprofit coapplicants, provided that an eligible city, county/parish, other unit of local government, or eligible State or Tribe are identified as the lead or co-applicant. Non-profit co-applicants may include community development financial institutions that are positioned to accelerate the pace at which low-income homeowners and rental property owners can address lead paint hazards in high-risk communities.
• New financing mechanism pilot.—The Committee is aware of the need for new financing mechanisms to address lead and other residential environmental stressors in low-income communities with older housing stock. The Committee provides $10,000,000 for the department to establish a national financing pilot within the Healthy Homes Program, so that these communities can access a range of financial products and increase the pace of eliminating home-based hazards. HUD should collaborate with one or more financial institutions that serve low-income communities, and coordinate with the Department of the Treasury to leverage HUD’s lending capabilities. The Committee requests a report on the progress of this pilot within 180 days of enactment of this Act.

Read the bill here. Read the report here.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

We track three programs within CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH). The bill maintains level funding for two of them, Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention and the National Asthma Control Program, and eliminates funding for the third, the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. The bill also removes funding for climate and health work at NCEH.

The bill report directs CDC to*:

Asthma.—The Committee recognizes the significance of asthma as a chronic disease with implications for public health, productivity at work and at school, and healthcare utilization. The Committee directs CDC to provide a briefing on the current economic burden of asthma in the U.S. to help guide public health efforts and resource allocation within 180 days of the enactment of this Act. The CDC last published this data in 2018 in a report titled, ‘‘The Economic Burden of Asthma in the U.S., 2008–2013.’’ Specifically, the Committee directs CDC to provide a thorough assessment of the following key aspects: prevalence, medical costs, absenteeism, and mortality.

Read the bill here. Read the report here. (CDC is funded within the Labor-HHS-Education bill.)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

We track several programs within EPA, including those that deal with lead, IAQ, and environmental justice. Some of these programs are so small that they don’t get their own line items in the budgets produced by Congress. However, looking at the funding levels for the parent programs gives us some insight on what could be in store for healthy housing work. Here’s some of what the EPA bill includes:

• The bill cuts the Indoor Air and Radiation line item² basically in half, down to $14 million. This includes much of EPA’s IAQ and radon work.
• Eliminates funding to the Children and Other Sensitive Populations line item.
• Cuts the Toxics Risk Review and Prevention³ line by about 13%. This includes much of EPA’s lead work.
• Provides level funding for the lead and radon categorical grants, which fund work in the states.
• Eliminates funding for environmental justice work. This eliminates annual funding for EPA’s EJ work, not necessarily the ongoing use of the $3 billion provided by the IRA, which was a one-time funding amount.

Read the bill here. Read the report here. (EPA is funded within the Interior-Environment bill.)

What’s Next?

The next stage in the appropriations process is for the Senate to release their appropriations bills. While Senate Appropriations leaders have announced an agreement on overall allocations for each subcommittee, they have not yet released bill text for HUD, CDC, or EPA, but that will begin to change this week: The Senate Appropriations committee will hold a markup and release the bill for HUD on Thursday, July 25.

If you’re looking at the numbers above and thinking that you’d like the Senate to do something differently than the House, we’re right there with you. As all of us concerned about housing quality know, the need for support to fix substandard housing and ensure that everyone has a safe and healthy place to live is high, and these federal programs are critical.

One way you can take action is to call or write to Senate appropriators this week and urge them to adequately fund these programs. Here’s how you can put together a plan to do it:

• If you’re not sure whom to contact: Review the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee here. If one of your senators is on this list, they always appreciate hearing from constituents! It’s also okay to submit letters to the leaders of the committee.
• If you’re not sure how to contact them: Congressional office websites should provide a web form/email, phone number, or both; you can also look on this page to get to a phone number list. Or, if you shoot me an email (sgoodwin@nchh.org), I’m happy to help you out and get you the right contact info.
• If you’re not sure what to say: Good news – the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition has a list of requests for funding for all of these programs that you are welcome to use! Here’s where you can find them:
  • FY25 NSHHC funding requests: These charts have requested funding levels for all the programs listed above, as well as short descriptions of why the programs are important.
  • 2024 Hill Day talking points: This document, which the NSHHC used for our Hill Day this May, provides some general talking points about why healthy housing is important and also includes some requests for programmatic changes to HUD’s OLHCHH.
  • For an example of how to use the NSHHC asks as a starting point, here’s a letter NCHH sent this week where we echoed the NSHHC asks and added a couple considerations of our own.

You’re welcome to pick and choose among the different asks when using these materials. Really care about HUD? Know firsthand the importance of CDC’s asthma work? Focus on what you most want to talk about!

As we go forward (and depending on what we see from the Senate this week and beyond), it’s likely that there will be more opportunities to engage in advocacy with the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition, too; if you’re not already on it, you can sign up for the coalition list here to receive updates about that.

The government needs funding and as the gears of the appropriations cycle move forward, so too does our opportunity to influence it. Remember, your members of Congress and their staff work for you—and they appreciate it when constituents highlight issues they care about and needs affecting their home states.

 

*text reproduced from the bill report(s).
¹This is actually listed under the research section; the other report items are listed under OLHCHH.
²Within Environmental Programs and Management.
³Also within EPM.

 

Sarah Goodwin joined NCHH as a policy analyst in June 2017. She previously served NCHH as a policy intern, helping to establish and run the Find It, Fix It, Fund It lead action drive and its work groups. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies: Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government from American University.