In the Homestretch: Help Shape the FY'17 Conference Committee Budget! Advocate with Us for Housing and Homelessness Programs
In the Homestretch: Help Shape the FY'17 Conference Committee Budget!
Advocate with Us for Housing and Homelessness Programs
Advocate with Us for Housing and Homelessness Programs
Initially posted June 2, 2016
Though the Senate and House both have gone through their initial budget recommendation and debate processes for fiscal year 2017 we're not done yet! After the Senate's adoption of its version of the FY'17 budget on May 26th, we have now moved to the next phase of the budget process: Conference Committee.
Once the House and the Senate vote on their respective budgets, each branch appoints three members to a joint committee (the "Conference Committee") to work out and resolve all differences between the two budgets. The compromise budget that comes out of Conference Committee is then brought to the House and Senate members for a final vote before being sent to the Governor.
This year's House Conference Committee members are Representatives Brian Dempsey (D-Haverhill, Chair of House Ways and Means), Stephen Kulik (D-Worthington, Vice Chair of House Ways and Means), and Todd Smola (R-Warren, Minority Member of House Ways and Means). The Senate Conference Committee members are Senators Karen Spilka (D-Ashland, Chair of Senate Ways and Means), Sal DiDomenico (D-Everett, Vice Chair of Senate Ways and Mean), and Vinny deMacedo (R-Plymouth, Minority Member of Senate Ways and Means).
In order to ensure that the Conference Committee's budget has the best language and highest levels of funding possible for housing and homelessness issues, we need you to help urge the committee members to create a compromise budget that prioritizes these programs. We will update this page shortly, so you can contact your own legislators and ask them to convey their support to the Conference Committee and to Leadership for the language and funding levels to be detailed in our upcoming Conference Committee letter. Read our letter to the conferees here, outlining our complete Conference Committee priorities, and our preliminary action alert and follow-up alert. See below for more details on our top three priorities.
Top priorities:
- Top priority fact sheet
- One-minute online action to legislators (posted 6-21-16)
- Action alert from 6-21-16
- Expanding access to the Residential Assistance for Families in Transition (RAFT) homelessness prevention program: Please ask your legislators to support the Senate version of the RAFT line item (7004-9316), which expands the definition of family to include elders, people with disabilities, unaccompanied youth, and other household types and adds $500,000 to serve these households, while retaining level funding of $12.5 million for families with children under the age of 21. RAFT online action to legislators; RAFT Conference Committee fact sheet; testimony from Susan O. in support of RAFT expansion
- Allowing families to access Emergency Assistance (EA) family shelter before they are forced to stay in places not meant for human habitation: Please ask your legislators to support the Senate version of the EA line item (7004-0101), which allows otherwise eligible families to enter EA without having to prove that they already have stayed in an emergency room, car, campground, etc.
- EA Conference Committee fact sheet
- Letter from Boston Children's Hospital and more than 100 medical providers and others in support of the Senate EA language to protect famiilies
- Boston Globe coverage from June 20th, "Costs at heart of emergency shelter eligibility debate" and May 17th, "Massachusetts Senate unveils $39.5 billion budget"
- Funding housing and services for unaccompanied youth and young adults at at least $2 million: Please ask your legislators to support the Senate version of the unaccompanied youth line item (4000-0007), which is $1 million more than the House version. Unaccompanied youth Conference Committee fact sheet
