Conference committee settles on $25 million for new housing program, sets population-tier buckets and slum-and-blight carve‑out

A conference committee for the Appropriations - Government Operations Division voted to fund a new housing program at $25 million, with specific allocations for communities by population size and a flexible approach to slum-and-blight remediation.

Committee members said the funding level was a compromise between the House, which had pushed for larger sums, and the Senate, which favored a smaller pilot. The committee approved a bucketed breakdown of the $25 million and removed a fixed-dollar set‑aside for slum-and-blight remediation so the program can use funds for that purpose without an explicit line-item amount.

The committee adopted the following breakout for the $25 million: $7,000,000 for subsection A, $10,500,000 for subsection B, $6,000,000 for subsection C and $1,500,000 for subsection D, leaving $2,500,000 identified in discussion for slum-and-blight remediation as an eligible use of the program. The allocation replaces earlier proposals that ranged from…