Ranking Member DeLauro Remarks at Fiscal Year 2026 Department of Housing and Urban Development Budget Hearing

WASHINGTON — CongresswomanRosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee’s fiscal year 2026 budget hearing for the Department of Housing and Urban Development:

-As Submitted for the Record-

Thank you, Chairman Womack and Ranking Member Clyburn, for holding this hearing on the Trump Administration’s budget request for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

Secretary Turner, I welcome you to the House of Representatives. Thank you for appearing before the committee today. 

However, I cannot thank you for your budget request, which would unleash a catastrophe of evictions and homelessness at an unbelievable scale on the American people. 

Already, three quarters of a million Americans experience homelessness on any given night, and the cost of housing is out of control, suffocating middle class and working American families. Americans are working paycheck to paycheck, one emergency or layoff away from financial ruin, yet your budget eliminates critical lifelines that help keep a roof over the most vulnerable Americans’ heads.

But before I get into how your budget would throw more than a million Americans out onto the streets, I want to talk about what is happening right now.

The American people demand help with the cost of living. Rents have skyrocketed far faster than wages. The cost to purchase a home has made the American dream an American fantasy for middle class and working families. But President Trump is not laser focused on the cost-of-living crisis – he is actually making it worse. He promised to fight for workers and the middle class, but instead put billionaires like Elon Musk in charge of the government. 

This Administration and Republicans in Congress are attacking programs and services that help Americans afford a place to live in order to hand tax breaks to billionaires. We need the government to fight for the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable. We have an Administration doing the opposite.

This Administration is recklessly, and unlawfully, freezing and stealing funds from grants and programs within your Department that fight housing discrimination, prevent homelessness, and protect low-income families – abandoning and stealing from the most vulnerable Americans. 

You illegally cancelled contracts to help small developers in rural and Tribal communities get people off the streets and into stable housing. You also terminated grants for non-profits to fight the scourge of housing discrimination, meaning many Americans, including people with disabilities, will go without safe and sufficient housing. And you have frozen funding for a program that helps make senior and family housing more energy efficient and resilient from natural disasters – increasing energy costs and endangering American seniors and families.

In my district, you have frozen a grant awarded to The Towers, a nonprofit that provides housing for Jewish seniors in need of support and care, preventing critical renovations for the 55-year-old building.

Keeping people housed, fighting housing discrimination, and ensuring the safety of our communities is not waste, fraud, or abuse. These are lifelines that help keep Americans from living on the streets.

Turning to your budget, I am frankly appalled by the destruction you propose of our housing safety net, and I am horrified of the consequences for my constituents and for Americans across the country.

Your budget cuts nearly $46 billion from successful programs that make housing more accessible for vulnerable Americans, and replaces them with block grants, for which you have provided no detail as to how they will be administered.

To claim that state and local governments will pick up the slack is a complete fiction. No one here believes their state can cover the difference of funds they collect through the programs you seek to cut. 

You completely eliminate Section 8 Rental Assistance for the 3.5 million working and low-income households that depend on the program to keep a roof over their heads. 

You completely eliminate the Community Development Block Grant, which over a thousand state and local governments use to address critical infrastructure needs and public improvements, including drinking- and waste-water projects.

You completely eliminate the sole federal program dedicated to affordable housing construction. 45,000 affordable housing units are slated to be produced next year with these funds. That is 45,000 families who will not have a place to live under your budget.

I thought we shared the goal of helping more people to move off assistance, yet you eliminate grants for public housing agencies to help residents achieve self-sufficiency and economic independence.

Also eliminated: grants to reduce barriers to new housing construction, grants for addressing lead, mold, and other environmental hazards, and grants for fair housing investigations.

Your budget will put adequate, safe housing out of reach for millions of American households.

This Administration claims to support manufacturing and construction, yet while materials get more expensive because of the President’s trade wars, you are removing the investments that help more housing get built. 

This Administration claims to be lowering costs, yet you are putting affordable housing even more out of reach.

Mr. Secretary, this budget is a pro-eviction, pro-homelessness platform. The American people cannot afford to meet their basic needs, and they cannot afford your budget that will kick them to the streets. 

I thank the Chair, and I look forward to your testimony.

###