Lawmakers hear bill to boost homelessness grants and add $200 million to housing incentive fund

Representative Ben Koppelman, interim chairman of the Legislature’s Government Services interim committee, presented Senate Bill 2030 at a hearing of the Appropriations — Education and Environment Division and described a multi-part plan that would add short-term homelessness grants, a consultant study, matching grants for school homeless liaisons and a large appropriation to the Housing Incentive Fund.

The bill draft presented would dedicate $10,000,000 “for the biennium” for short-term emergency homelessness grants, $50,000 for a housing finance agency consultant study, a matching grant program for the 10 school districts with the highest rates of student homelessness (up to $1,000,000 total, $50,000 per district per year), and what the committee described as a $200,000,000 commitment to the Housing Incentive Fund spread over the next four to six years. “That amount is $10,000,000 for the biennium,” Koppelman told the committee, and he later summarized the larger request: the committee believes “that the number is at least 200,000,000 over the next 4 to 6 years.”

Why it matters: witnesses told the committee that North Dakota’s homelessness response is strained by limited shelter capacity and by a shortage of affordable housing, and they urged the Legislature to use the Housing Incentive Fund to fill financing gaps that block projects statewide. Jennifer Henderson, director of Community Housing and Grants Management at the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency, said the agency manages the state’s homeless grant programs and the Housing Incentive Fund and showed the committee data on rising renter cost burden, an aging housing stock and unmet demand. Henderson said prior HIF rounds left $46 million in unfunded multifamily requests last biennium and that, with larger appropriations, HIF could support substantially more production: “We have the demand.”

Service providers and people with lived experience urged funding for operations as well as development. Chandler Eslinger, executive director of the Fargo-Moorhead Coalition to End Homelessness and board chair of the North Dakota Coalition for Homeless People, described prevention and crisis-response gaps and urged a “due pass” for SB 2030 because “investment in the housing incentive fund is a homelessness prevention strategy.” Jenna Gallo, executive director of Missouri Slope Area Wide United Way, described the Center for Opportunity in Bismarck and warned that current operations “help between 80 to 100 people per night” and that daytime services and staffing are at risk without increased state funding. Gallo told the committee, “During severe weather … having proper funding to keep our doors open is a matter of life and death.”

Agency and provider testimony outlined how the proposed funding would be used. The North Dakota Housing Finance Agency said HIF is a flexible state funding tool that can pair with federal programs such as Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, HOME, and HUD Continuum of Care grants; Henderson gave examples of recent HIF-supported projects in rural and urban communities and estimated production from a larger appropriation (for example, the agency estimated roughly 270 multifamily units per year from a $40 million-per-year HIF allocation and 70–80 single-family homes per year from a $10 million single-family set-aside, using current cost assumptions). Dave Florrick, executive director of North Dakota Housing (the agency that administers state homeless programs), urged lawmakers not to cut the emergency grant funding and said the programs that receive NDHG funds can deploy small-dollar assistance quickly to prevent homelessness.

Committee questions focused on program details and mechanics: whether the two proposed studies (the HFA consultant and the legislative management study) would duplicate work or coordinate, how HIF dollars would be parceled between urban and rural projects, whether the state had maximized federal matches, and how school homeless liaisons would be funded and implemented (the bill proposes matching grants for the 10 largest districts). Participants said the consultant would gather industry data to inform the legislative study, that HIF has been used to finance both rural and urban projects (with different leverage outcomes), and that many districts currently assign homeless-liaison duties part time rather than funding a full-time position.

Several providers described operational shortfalls: United Way’s Bismarck shelter staff said NDHG currently provides roughly $138,000 per year to their operation — enough for only 2½ months of 24/7 operations — and warned that program cuts would reduce daytime services, on-site case management and the data collection needed to access HUD funding. The YWCA Cass Clay and other operators described supportive housing and shelter programs that, they said, reduce emergency services use and increase housing stability. Nonprofit developers detailed demand: Beyond Shelter and other developers described multi-hundred-unit pipelines and near-zero vacancy rates in some affordable projects.

What the hearing did not decide: The session was an informational bill hearing; no vote or formal committee action on SB 2030 was recorded. Committee members and witnesses agreed further work will be required in appropriations and budget negotiations; the chair said the bill would be addressed again in upcoming appropriations discussions and related hearings.

Next steps: Committee members closed the hearing without action and signaled that the SB 2030 provisions will be considered during budget deliberations and in hearings tied to the Housing Finance Agency and the Industrial Commission budget.