Affordable housing funds must be excluded from a new federal requirement that will raise barriers to infrastructure projects key to senior housing, LeadingAge has told the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Buy America, Build America Act of 2021 requires domestic procurement for construction and manufacturing products used in federally funded infrastructure. HUD programs now operate under a waiver from the requirement, which is set to expire on Nov. 15.
Without a continued waiver or exclusion, a new “Buy America” preference requirements will apply to projects funded through certain HUD awards, LeadingAge reported. HUD has indicated that those projects likely will include new Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly awardees and recipients of other key housing programs, such as HOME and the Community Development Block Grant, the organization said.
LeadingAge is calling on HUD to reconsider the “scope and applicability” of its program before it jeopardizes affordable housing options in a time of skyrocketing housing costs. It argued that the original requirements purposefully left HUD-funded housing out of the new infrastructure funding allotments.
Many Section 202 current-round awardees already are struggling to manage construction cost increases and supply chain disruptions even without new material-sourcing requirements in place, the senior housing advocate has reported.
Restrictive requirements will make an already difficult situation worse, it added in a Friday statement.
“With construction material costs and other inflation at record levels, new restrictions on materials used in HUD-funded projects could derail planned and anticipated affordable senior housing construction and rehab,” it said.
The goals in BABA are laudable, LeadingAge wrote in July comments after a notice was published in the Federal Register in June. But “implementing such requirements may exacerbate the massive and nationwide affordable housing shortage and ultimately have an overall negative impact on the country’s affordable housing goals.”
