Housing Our Military Veterans Effectively Act of 2023

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 3848, as amended, the Housing our Military Veterans Effectively, or HOME Act.

I have conflicting emotions as I finally stand here advocating for the passage of the HOME Act. On one hand, I am elated to finally see this language move forward that will ultimately get more veterans off the street and into housing. That is my goal here, to end veteran homelessness. On the other hand, I remain frustrated with the length of time it took this body to take up this bill and the fact that I will have to be back on the floor next year advocating for the same authorities here to be extended yet again since most of this bill expires on September 30, 2024.

Last week, VA announced they met their goal to house 38,000 veterans this calendar year several months early. I am very proud of this accomplishment, but unfortunately, this does not reflect the full picture of the reality we face related to veteran homelessness in our country.

HUD's 2023 Point-in-Time Count will be released soon. Based on initial reports from communities across the country, it will likely show a dramatic increase in veteran homelessness. We are losing ground. The VA is doing incredible work to get veterans into housing, but when one veteran gets housed, another is falling into homelessness.

We need to bolster the prevention tools the VA and providers have to quickly address a veteran's housing insecurity the moment it occurs. The Democratic-led authorities in the HOME Act are those very tools.

This bill, which includes two Democratic bills, from Congresswomen Cherfilus-McCormick and Williams, gives the VA and its community providers the flexibilities and resources they need to effectively house veterans experiencing homelessness and at risk of becoming homeless.

However, the bill before us today isn't perfect. It has technical flaws that we quickly brought to the attention of our Republican colleagues, but they refused to fix it. If we send the language we are considering today over to the Senate, the Senate will have to amend the language, pass it, and send it back to the House for final passage, leaving more time that the VA and providers operate without these authorities, more time that homeless veterans go without, and more time that homeless veterans spend on the street.

I need not say to all in this Chamber that we know that December is upon us. I spoke in the Chamber just a few weeks ago about the fact that winter was upon us and yet we had not passed the HOME Act.

I am really disappointed by this unforced error of being in a position where we find ourselves here on the floor to pass an empty gesture. We reported this bill out to the House in July. As happens, there have been additional changes that needed to be made. We had agreement with the Senate on these changes, yet the majority chose not to proceed with the agreement. We are here on a bill that is not going anywhere any time soon.

The reality of this situation is that Republicans are playing games and using homeless veterans as their pawns. Homeless veterans do not have time for games. Maybe it seems easy because these most vulnerable veterans don't have lobbyists stating their case or advocating their case. Every night they spend on the street is a night this Congress could have prevented. These are our most vulnerable veterans, in the most vulnerable situations, and we owe it to them to keep our word to send the VA the resources they need to help them.

For some homeless veterans, this is literally a matter of life or death.

At the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity legislative hearing on this bill earlier this year, we heard directly from the VA about a homeless veteran who was imminently considering taking his life by suicide before the VA intervened and got him the help he needed using the authorities this bill would reauthorize.

The VA's recent Suicide Prevention Report indicated that homeless veterans are 186 percent more likely to die by suicide than any other veteran. These Democratic-led provisions are suicide prevention tools. They are lifesaving. In only 12 days from when the authorities in this bill lapsed at the end of the public health emergency, between May 11, 2023, and May 23, 2023, the VA was forced to cancel over 42,000 rides that supported over 18,000 veterans to attend 10,000 medical appointments. Just 12 days caused that big of an impact. Here we are, 207 days later, and I can barely fathom how many homeless veterans went without in that period.

If we are going to help homeless veterans, we need a hotline-ready bill to send to the Senate. By hotline, we are talking about the Senate hotline for House bills that have been passed and are ready to pass the Senate because they have no flaws, no substantive flaws.

Why aren't we sending to the Senate hotline-ready bills from the House of Representatives when we know the language that needs to be put in those bills has all been agreed to by the four corners? Senators Tester and Schumer both assured me last week that if we sent the Senate both of the four-corners agreed-upon language for this bill and for the Elizabeth Dole Home Care Act, they would get these bills onto the Senate hotline so that they have a chance of getting to the President's desk by Christmas.

As we enter the holiday season and a cold winter, we should take our duty to help homeless veterans as seriously as possible. We must do all we can to get these veterans housed and off the streets during the coldest months of the year. We did have a choice here. We had a choice.

Instead, we have before us here a flawed bill that the Senate will have to amend and send back to us. We can end veteran homelessness. It is a choice that Congress can make to fully fund the resources and authorities that the VA and its partners need to get veterans into stable permanent housing.

We saw proof of this during the pandemic, one of the most difficult times in our country's recent history, when we actually reduced veteran homelessness by 11 percent. We know what works. We know that the Democratic-led flexibilities and authorities included in the HOME Act will reduce homelessness.

I must register my disagreement with what my colleague from Wisconsin has claimed, that the grant and per diem rates were adequate. They were never adequate. It was because of the flexibilities we included during the health emergency that we were able to address the always inadequate levels of funding. It is a falsehood to try to claim that it was about inflation. No, these program per diem rates for the many, many organizations out there that help our veterans across the country were never adequate.

We had an opportunity to move forward a compromise today, but a different choice was made. I am going to hope against hope that somehow this bill does get to the President before the end of the year and that we don't have it on our conscience that we made homeless veterans suffer any more than they already have.

I will ask my colleagues to support H.R. 3848, as amended, today, and I will also say a prayer that we see through to doing the right thing.

I would submit to my colleagues on the other side, after all, isn't that why we are here, to do the right thing?

Mr. VAN ORDEN.

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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, I wish that we could be sending over to the Senate today a hotline-ready bill.

We knew what we had to put into this bill. The majority knew what corrections needed to be made. By tradition, subsequent to the vote that we took today, we could have done those corrections and had a bill that could have gone on the Senate hotline. Absent any Senator's objection, it could have been sent to the President's desk for sure by the Christmas holiday.

By some miracle something could happen. There could be a heating of the conscience. There is a conscious choice being made today to not send the Senate a bill that is substantively freed from the flaws that we could have fixed.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I hope against hope that we still can get this done by the end of the year.

Mr. VAN ORDEN.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to remind my great friend and colleague from the State of California, as the previous ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee where the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House were held by his party, that this could have been passed in this period of time.

In that period of time under Democratic control, the per diem rate was set at 125 percent by Speaker Emeritus Kevin McCarthy and was agreed to by the now ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

As many Members of this body have been sitting for a decade or multiple decades, I was serving in the United States Navy, freezing outside in combat, and now a veteran. There is a difference between the life experiences.

The time for talk and political sharpshooting each other is over. The time to act is now. In fact, I do agree with my colleague that we cannot allow another veteran to go homeless as winter is upon us here.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask Mr. Takano and the other Democrats on that side of the aisle to join me, as I will join them, in working collectively as Members of this body to ensure that everything that is done here is for a higher purpose. The higher purpose is making sure that those who have protected our lives, as we live in freedom, are able to live in peace and prosperity. If they need a hand up, they get it.

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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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