[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 39 (Thursday, March 10, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Page S1441]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. COLLINS (for herself, Mr. Reed, Mr. Kirk, Mr. Durbin, and 
        Mr. Schatz):
  S. 2668. A bill to provide housing opportunities for individuals 
living with HIV or AIDS; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and 
Urban Affairs.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am pleased to be joining my 
colleague, Senator Collins, in introducing a bill to update the funding 
formula for the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, or HOPWA, 
program.
  HOPWA is a program within the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development, HUD, that provides state and local governments with 
resources to ensure that stable housing and supportive services are 
available for low-income individuals living with HIV/AIDS and their 
families.
  Stable and affordable housing is a critical component of treatment 
for HIV-positive individuals. More than half of this population will 
face homelessness or an unstable housing situation at some point during 
the course of their illness. Medication for treatment is extremely 
expensive, and the assistance offered by HOPWA results in better 
management of this illness, reduces the risk of HIV transmission, and 
ensures that better public health outcomes can be achieved.
  Our bipartisan legislation seeks to strengthen HOPWA by improving the 
accuracy of the formula used to distribute funding to housing programs 
that benefit people living with HIV/AIDS. This improved funding formula 
would take into account the number of persons currently living in a 
community with HIV/AIDS.
  HOPWA's current funding formula instead considers the cumulative 
number of individuals diagnosed with HIV in a community since 1981, and 
includes those individuals who have since passed away. In fact, 
according to HUD, 55 percent of the cases used to determine funding 
allocations under the current formula are deceased individuals. As a 
result, this diverts already limited funding from communities that are 
dealing with the effects of this epidemic most acutely today
  Our bill proposes a more accurate formula that will protect low-
income individuals living with HIV/AIDS and their families and will 
better target federal resources to the states and localities with the 
greatest need today. In short, we hope to make the program more 
effective and responsive in addressing the current needs of 
communities.
  Furthermore, to ease the move to a fairer allocation of resources, 
the bill transitions current grantees to the new formula over a 5-year 
period. Grantees will not lose more than 5 percent of their share of 
HOPWA formula funds in each successive year until fiscal year 2021 and 
cannot gain more than 10 percent of their share in each successive 
fiscal year.
  I thank Senator Collins for her partnership, and I urge my colleagues 
to support this bipartisan bill, which will enable communities to 
provide care to those living with HIV/AIDS by ensuring that their 
current housing challenges can be addressed.
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