On June 27, 2017 the House Appropriations Committee released its draft agriculture appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018. The Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee will review the bill on June 28.

The House bill does not eliminate rural housing programs, as was proposed by the Administration. It does reduce funding for many programs below FY17 levels, as indicated in the table below.

It does follow the Administration in defunding the Rural Community Development Initiative, a capacity-building program. It does not specifically mention the Administration’s proposal to reorganize Rural Development and some other parts of USDA, but it does prohibit use of any funding to reorganize offices, programs, or activities.

The House bill adopts the Rural Economic Infrastructure Account proposed in the Administration’s budget, and moves several Rural Development programs into that pool: Section 504 grants, Section 533 grants, community facilities grants, grants for telemedicine distance learning, and broadband transmission grants. The Administration would eliminate Section 533 Housing Preservation Grants rather than moving them to the infrastructure account. The House would provide $122.7 million for the new account rather than the $162 million proposed by the Administration. Like the Administration’s budget, the House would set aside half of its funding total – $60 million – for Appalachia. The House also establishes a minimum amount for each program, 15 percent of the total, or $18.4 million. It is not entirely clear whether that minimum would apply to Section 504 and 533 combined, or to each separately.

For rental housing preservation, the House bill follows the final FY17 appropriations law. Like that legislation, it does not extend the voucher program to cover properties where mortgages matured, but it does require USDA to help nonprofits and PHAs to preserve rental properties. Nonprofits and PHAs would be allowed to receive returns on investment and asset management fees when purchasing rental properties to preserve them. [tdborder][/tdborder]