This year, the Obama Administration released its final budget proposal, which strongly prioritized ending homelessness. Now, it’s up to all of us to persuade Congress to make ending homelessness a priority in FY 2017 as well!
Earlier this week, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), and Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), began asking their colleagues in the House and Senate to join "Dear Colleague" Member sign-on letters in support of the Administration’s requested funding levels for key programs serving people experiencing homelessness.
We need to get as many representatives' and senators' signatures as possible on these letters, and we need YOUR help! Both letters received strong support last year, and we need to get even stronger support this year! The deadline for the House letter is Friday, March 11 and the deadline for the Senate letter is Monday, March 14.
What You Can Do:
To see if your representative or senator has already joined the letter, check here for the House letter and here for the Senate letter (these lists will be updated regularly). You can also see if your Members joined similar letters last spring by checking here for the Senate and here for the House.
- As part of our Letter Writing Campaign, send a letter to your Members and ask them to join the Dear Colleague letters.
- If you don’t have time to send a letter, no problem! Call your Members’ offices to let them know that you would like them to sign on to the appropriate Dear Colleague letter!
- You can find your Members’ numbers by calling the congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 (or searching here for your Representative or here for your Senators.)
- If they say they cannot join the letter, ask if they will submit a "programmatic request" in support of providing $2.664 for HUD's McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants program and $20.854 billion to Section 8 TBRA in FY 2017.
- Spread the word about the campaign by downloading our sample action alert and sample letters and sharing them with your email contacts.
- Let Jaime Colman or Julie Klein know which office(s) you contacted.
Please reach out to your Members' offices AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to make sure they sign on!
More Information:
Both letters circulating call for providing $2.664 billion for McKinney in fiscal (FY) 2017, and the Senate letter also calls for providing $20.854 billion for Section 8 Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA), including new vouchers for homeless families, in FY 2017.
To learn more about how you can get involved in the Alliance’s advocacy efforts this year, please visit our FY 2017 Homelessness Funding Campaign. For more information on what was in the Administration’s FY 2017 Budget Proposal, please visit our President’s FY 2017 Budget Briefing page. |
