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HUD Secretary Ben Carson recently announced the first round of “EnVision Center” designations in 17 communities across the nation. One of Secretary Carson’s signature initiatives, EnVision Centers will offer HUD-assisted families access to support services that can help them achieve self-sufficiency, thereby making scarce federal resources more readily available to a greater number of households currently waiting to receive HUD assistance.

HUD recently announced that it will formally seek the public's comment on whether its 2013 Disparate Impact Regulation is consistent with the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. "HUD remains committed to making sure housing-related policies and practices treat people fairly," said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. "We will always challenge any practice that discriminates against people the law protects."

The House Appropriations Transportation-HUD (THUD) Subcommittee recently released its draft fiscal year (FY) 2019 spending bill. The House subcommittee bill maintains the 10 percent increase in HUD funding that was secured in FY18 with modest additional increases for FY19, and it ignores President Trump’s call for cuts to affordable housing.

In response to HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s proposal to increase rents and impose work requirements on the lowest income households, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) recently introduced H. Res. 886 to affirm the importance of the Brooke rule. Enacted by Congress in 1969, the Brooke rule limited federally assisted housing tenants' out-of-pocket rent expenditure to 25 percent of their income.

President Trump recently released an executive order, “Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility,” designed to guide agencies that administer public assistance programs to effectively reform the welfare system. The executive order is essentially a statement of principles by the president. The proposed work requirements are non-binding and, in the case of housing programs, would require Congressional action to implement.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development held a FY 2019 budget hearing on April 18. HUD Secretary Ben Carson testified, defending his proposal to cut his department’s funding levels. Dr. Carson agreed with senators about the importance of HUD programs, but continually referred to the growing national debt as the reason for the cuts.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson recently unveiled a package of reforms designed to offer public housing authorities, property owners, and HUD-assisted families a simpler and more transparent set of rent structures. Through its Making Affordable Housing Work Act, HUD is seeking to reform decades-old rent policies.

HUD recently awarded nearly $5 million to six communities to help create plans to redevelop severely distressed HUD assisted housing and revitalize neighborhoods. Funded through HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, these grants are intended to help local leaders to craft comprehensive, homegrown plans to revitalize and transform these neighborhoods.

HUD and the City of Houston today announced a joint agreement designed to expand housing choice and mobility for lower income residents, including those experiencing homelessness and victims of Hurricane Harvey.

The agreement requires the City of Houston to adopt multifamily priorities and a policy for objectively evaluating federally supported affordable housing developments in all areas of Houston; to seek to invest additional funds in homeless assistance programs; and to encourage more landlord participation in Houston's housing voucher program.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) recently released a new report, The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, which finds a national shortage of 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for extremely low income (ELI) renter households. These are households earning up to 30 percent of their area median income. The report also shows that there are only 35 affordable and available units for every 100 ELI renter households nationwide and that 71 percent of ELI renter households are severely housing cost-burdened, spending more than half of their income on housing.