House Democrats ask USDA to preserve rural housing funds
A group of House Democrats is calling on the Agriculture Department to use “every available lawful authority” to preserve hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for rural housing that was set to expire with the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.
The 14 lawmakers led by Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke
Rollins in a new letter first shared with POLITICO asking USDA to provide detailed accounting of the obligated and remaining funds in the Single Family Direct Home Loans program and identify ways to shorten loan processing times.
POLITICO first reported that with fiscal 2026 ending Wednesday, USDA’s Rural Development agency had only spent about half of the $1 billion allocated by Congress for the program, which helps low-income families buy homes in rural communities, leaving more than $200 million to
expire.
Allowing the money to expire “would represent a significant departure from the program’s historic funding needs at a time when rural families continue to face high housing costs, limited housing supply, and elevated borrowing costs,” the lawmakers wrote.
Experts said technical changes USDA made in February to how it runs the program are partly to blame. The lawmakers note that they included language in the fiscal 2027 Agriculture appropriations package that would reverse some of those changes, though Senate appropriators
have yet to finalize the package.
USDA blamed its inability to spend the funds on last year’s government shutdown.