U.S. Financial Services Committee housing subcommittee holds hearing on modernizing the HOME Investment Partnerships Program

The U.S. Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance held a hearing on bipartisan approaches to the housing shortage, focusing on possible modernization of the HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME) Program, which provides block grant funding to states and municipalities to build and rehabilitate affordable housing and has not been reauthorized since 1992. Discussion highlighted how HOME is often used as gap financing alongside the low-income housing tax credit and how program requirements and wider federal policy changes are affecting delivery. Witnesses and members pointed to rising regulatory burdens, including Build America, Buy America Act (BABA) requirements enacted through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), with one witness estimating developers’ administrative costs could increase by about 8% to 10% of total project costs and warning of longer project timelines. Other testimony underscored HOME’s scale and economic impact, citing approximately 1.4 million affordable units produced or preserved since 1992, tenant-based rental assistance for an estimated 415,000 households, and estimates that each USD 1 billion in HOME funding supports about 18,230 jobs and leverages nearly five dollars in other public and private funding, with cumulative impacts of over two million jobs and about USD 135 billion in local income.