Washington, D.C. - While many people in Wyoming are trying to find an affordable 3 bedroom 2 bath house with a backyard and garage, many people are also trying to find a car or even a campground to call home.
U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., called attention to the plight of the homeless in rural America and highlighted changes to a major homelessness funding bill that would alleviate some of the struggles rural areas face. Enzi made his comments during a Banking Committee executive session this morning on Capitol Hill before the bill was passed unanimously.
"Owning a home is the American dream but for many Americans finding a roof over their heads for one night is hard enough," said Enzi, senior member of the Senate Banking Committee. "When a person is homeless in a rural area the difficulty finding housing is even more intense with greater distance between towns, fewer resources, and in Wyoming, much harsher weather than most areas of the country."
Enzi was successful in including provisions in the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act of 2007 (CPEHA) that passed the Banking Committee, which would help Wyoming. One provision Enzi sponsored would allow rural states to apply for funds through a new Rural Housing Stability Assistance Program, geared specifically for rural areas.
"By acknowledging the difference between homeless situations in rural and urban areas, we are already closer to providing more help for both areas. Rural areas are now guaranteed a minimum of funding and will no longer be competing against urban areas for funding," said Enzi. "Wyoming homeless programs are usually run by volunteers who don’t have a lot of time to write grant proposals and be effective when most large cities have full-time grant writers. By separating the rural grant program from those geared toward large cities Wyoming is able to focus on helping the homeless, not filling out paperwork."
This new program would allow Wyoming to compete for grant money with other rural areas instead of going up against urban areas for funds. The CPEHA bill would increase all formula homeless funding to 20 percent, the type of homeless funding Wyoming benefits from the most, and guarantee rural areas would receive a minimum level of funding through the competitive grant process. This lock down of funding for rural areas ensures Wyoming is not penalized for its small population, according to Enzi.
Wyoming received a little over $400,000 last year in homeless assistance funds. With Enzi’s changes in the CPEHA bill, it is fair for the state and, depending on overall appropriations and individual grants; Enzi believes Wyoming would do much better than in the past.
Enzi also added language to the bill that would expand the definition of what constitutes homeless to include camping, living in motels, hotels and cars or living "doubled up" in housing meant for single families.
The CPEHA bill is now awaiting debate by the full Senate.
Statement of Senator Mike Enzi
Senate Banking Committee Markup of: The Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act of 2007 and the FHA Modernization Act of 2007 September 19, 2007 Thank you Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that the Committee is moving to mark up this legislation today. Two of these bills are meant to address the issue of housing in our nation, and there is no more pressing or important need. As the members of this Committee have discussed during the hearing process, the housing market has taken on enormous risk over the past few years, and has finally begun to suffer the consequences. More and more citizens are realizing that they cannot afford the house they live in. Unfortunately for many, it is too late. The FHA bill we will vote on today is an attempt to help those people by expanding the power of a federal program to take on that risk and deflect the rising costs of homeownership. I urge taking extreme caution in this approach. The Federal Housing Administration is and always was an affordable housing program meant to supplement the housing insurance market, not replace it. When a federal program like FHA expands, it also expands the risk borne by the taxpayer. Should the subprime mortgage market continue to decline and spread into the traditional mortgage market, this could be a significant problem for the FHA, and for all American citizens as taxpayers. I am hopeful that this Committee can continue to address the problems of the subprime market in the months to come. However, the only way to solve a market crisis is with a market-based solution, and I intend to work with my colleagues in this Committee to find that solution. I am also very pleased that the Chairman and Ranking Member have scheduled a vote today for the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act. This Committee has been considering this bill for a long time. Every iteration of this legislation gets better and better, and this is the best version yet. It balances the needs of charities and non-profits to offer homelessness services and emergency shelters in some parts of the country with the need for permanent homeless housing in other regions. It also balances the needs of rural and urban programs, and I think there are several important distinctions between the two. The face of rural homelessness is much different than in an urban setting. In Wyoming, we have residents who live in unsafe and condemned housing, or live doubled-up in housing meant for an individual or single family. In other cases, residents in Wyoming’s rural towns live day-to-day in motels or hotels because they cannot find anywhere else to live. In the most desperate cases, people live in campgrounds or in their cars. As you can understand, a car or a campground is not protection against the harsh Wyoming weather. Wyoming also faces the problem of geography. Wyoming may have a small population, but our residents are spread over a great distance. This presents a difficult problem when rural services try to coordinate their efforts, share resources, and address a homeless population that is scattered throughout the state. Rural states are at a distinct disadvantage from urban centers with a consolidated organization for this reason. This bill provides rural programs the power to help confront rural homelessness by addressing these two issues. It will grant much-needed flexibility for our rural non-profits and help them coordinate their efforts over large geographic distances by streamlining the application process. This legislation will also increase formula grant funding, where many rural states get the bulk of their federal homelessness dollars. Under this bill, federal funding can be used to specifically help the homeless populations I mentioned earlier. These groups have long been ignored by traditional homeless programs. These reforms will allow them to receive the services and housing they need to survive. I am hopeful this legislation will help rural organizations truly address the problems of rural homelessness. I want to thank Chairman Dodd and Ranking Member Shelby, and Senators Reed and Allard for their hard work on this bill and for working to address the concerns of rural states. I would also like to thank Senator Crapo for working with me to ensure that rural states like ours have their homelessness priorities addressed in this legislation. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
