Sponsors (9)
Official title: Establish a grant program to address the crisis in accessing affordable housing and child care through the co-location of housing and child care, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 29, 2025 by Ronald Lee Wyden · Last progress January 29, 2025
The bill aims to expand access to co‑located affordable housing and child care—especially in child care deserts and for tribal and low‑income communities—by authorizing dedicated funding and broad eligibility, but implementation complexity, funding trade‑offs, and program design risks could delay benefits and favor larger developers over smaller local providers.
Low‑income families (including public housing residents and renters) gain increased access to affordable housing with on‑site or adjacent child care, reducing travel time and improving parents' ability to work and care for children.
Eligible developers and service providers receive funding certainty through a $100 million per year authorization (FY2026–2031), enabling planning, construction, and longer‑term project development.
Families in child care deserts, rural areas, and very low‑income communities benefit from prioritized expansion of early childhood capacity via grant preferences for applicants serving those areas.
Small providers, local governments, and applicants may face significant administrative complexity, interagency coordination challenges, and broad eligibility rules that delay implementation, favor larger organizations, and reduce predictability.
Taxpayers fund $100 million annually through 2031 (and potential follow‑on costs indicated by the GAO study), increasing federal spending and creating budget trade‑offs for other programs.
Grant design and eligibility could channel funds to LIHTC/NMTC or higher‑cost-area projects and larger developers, increasing competition with public housing authorities and small nonprofits and potentially reducing benefits for the lowest‑income families.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Authorizes a HUD competitive grant program to fund co-located affordable housing and child care facilities and requires a GAO report on child care access for public housing residents.
Creates a competitive HUD grant program to fund the design, planning, construction, conversion, renovation, preservation, or retrofitting of facilities that colocate affordable housing and child care providers. The program prioritizes projects serving child care deserts, low-income communities, rural areas, Head Start or similar providers, and very low-income households; applicants must certify protections for residents and partner with eligible child care providers. The bill also directs GAO to report within one year on child care availability and affordability for public housing residents, how federal housing, community development, and tax-credit programs have been used to support child care, and barriers and recommendations to improve access and awareness.