Most of the funding for the activities of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) comes from discretionary appropriations provided each year in the annual appropriations acts enacted by Congress. HUD's programs are primarily designed to address housing problems faced by households with very low incomes or other special housing needs. These include several programs of rental assistance for persons who are poor, elderly, and/or have disabilities. Three rental assistance programs—Public Housing, Section 8 Vouchers, and Section 8 project-based rental assistance—account for the majority of the department's nonemergency funding (over three-quarters of total HUD appropriations in FY2012). Two flexible block grant programs—HOME and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)—help communities finance a variety of housing and community development activities designed to serve low-income families. Other more specialized grant programs help communities meet the needs of homeless persons, including those with AIDS. HUD's Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures mortgages made by lenders to home buyers with low downpayments and to developers of multifamily rental buildings containing relatively affordable units. FHA collects fees from insured borrowers, which are used to sustain the insurance fund and offset its administrative costs. Surplus FHA funds have been used to offset the cost of the HUD budget. In recent years, the HUD budget has also received significant amounts of emergency supplemental funding. For example, almost $20 billion was provided through HUD's budget for recovery assistance to communities affected by Hurricane Katrina and the other hurricanes of 2005. The economic stimulus legislation enacted in 2009 ( P.L. 111-5 ) provided over $13 billion to HUD's programs. Table 1 presents total enacted appropriations for HUD over the past five years, including emergency appropriations. (For more information, see CRS Report R42542, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Funding Trends Since FY2002 , by [author name scrubbed].) The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 ( H.R. 2112 , P.L. 112-55 ) was signed into law on November 18, 2011. The law provided year-long appropriations for several government agencies, including HUD, and provided continuing appropriations through December 16, 2011, for the remaining government agencies (which were later funded for the rest of the fiscal year in separate legislation). The act provided about $37.3 billion in net budget authority for HUD, which is about 9% less than was provided in FY2011. However, part of the decrease in net budget authority is attributable to increases in offsetting receipts and rescissions. Looking only at gross new appropriations, and not accounting for offsets, total funding for HUD's programs was decreased by about 2% in FY2012 compared to FY2011. On September 13, 2012, the House passed a continuing resolution, H.J.Res. 117 (112 th Congress), to fund government agencies—including HUD—at their FY2012 levels, increased by 0.612%, through the earlier enactment of final FY2013 appropriations legislation on March 27, 2012. The CR does not extend emergency funding that was provided in FY2012; HUD received $100 million in emergency funding in FY2012. The bill was approved by the Senate on September 22, 2012, and signed by the President on September 28, 2012 ( P.L. 112-175 ). The 112 th Congress adjourned without enactment of final FY2013 appropriations legislation. On March 6, 2013, the House approved a bill to provide full-year government-wide appropriations for FY2013 ( H.R. 933 , 113 th Congress). It contained a continuing resolution that would have continued funding for most federal agencies, including HUD, at FY2012 levels, reduced by an across-the-board rescission of 0.098%. It proposed to maintain the funding reductions imposed by the sequester that was ordered on March 1, 2013. The bill provided a number of anomalies, including two for accounts within the HUD budget; one modified the maximum set-aside for the Emergency Solutions Grants within the homeless assistance grants account and the other increased the authority and funding for Indian Housing Loan Guarantees. On March 12, 2013, the Senate Committee on Appropriations released a substitute amendment to H.R. 933 , which included several individual appropriations bills and a continuing resolution to fund the remaining federal agencies, including HUD, through the end of FY2013. The CR continued funding for most programs and activities at FY2012 levels. Like the House-passed bill, it proposed to maintain the funding reductions imposed by the March 1, 2013, sequester. The Senate substitute amendment included more anomalies and increased overall funding for HUD compared to the House-passed version of H.R. 933 . On March 20, 2013, the Senate amended and approved H.R. 933 . The next day, the House approved the Senate-passed version, sending the bill to the President. The President signed H.R. 933 into law on March 26, 2013 ( P.L. 113-6 ), just before the expiration of the six-month CR. The final version of H.R. 933 funds all HUD programs at FY2012 levels and subject to the FY2012 terms and conditions, except for the following: Section 1101(c) directs that most FY2012 rescissions (including the tenant-based rental assistance account rescission) are not extended under the CR. Section 1101(a)(7) directs that the $100 million in emergency funding provided for CDBG disaster assistance in FY2012 is not extended under the CR. Section 1805 provides $2.033 billion for the Homeless Assistance Grants, compared to the $1.9 billion that was provided in FY2012. Section 1806 provides $12 million for Indian Housing Loan Guarantees, which is twice what was provided in FY2012. It will support a loan level of $976 million, compared to $360 million in FY2012. Section 1807 provides $18.939 billion for the Section 8 tenant-based rental assistance (TBRA) account, compared to the $18.914 billion provided in FY2012, an increase of $25 million. The full increase is directed to fund administrative fees. As noted earlier, the CR does not include a $650 million rescission of TBRA funding that was included in the FY2012 appropriations law and reduced total funding for the account. Section 1809 provides $4.262 billion for the Public Housing Operating Fund, which is $300 million above the FY2012 level. Other HUD-specific anomalies extend the authority for Home Equity Conversion Mortgages insured by FHA (Section 1810) and make a technical change to the Housing Certificate Fund (Section 1808). Additionally, under the terms of Section 3004, as interpreted by OMB, HUD appropriations were subject to a 0.2% across-the-board rescission. Additionally, note that none of these funding levels reflect the reductions required by the March 1, 2013, sequestration order, and thus the budgetary resources available to nearly all HUD programs and activities in FY2013 were reduced further as directed by that order. (For more information about sequestration, see the Appendix .) After accounting for sequestration and the across-the-board rescission ordered by P.L. 113-6 , HUD programs and activities received $42.632 billion in new appropriations in FY2013 under the terms of the year-long CR. That amount is $1.6 billion less (-4%) than the FY2012 level of $44.241 billion. Because of an almost doubling in offsetting receipts from FHA, the net new budget authority required to provide this amount of appropriations was $31.425 billion, or about $6 billion less (-16%) than FY2012. The Transportation, HUD and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee approved a draft FY2013 funding bill on June 7, 2012; the full Appropriations Committee approved the draft bill on June 19, 2012, with only technical changes to the HUD portion ( H.R. 5972 , H.Rept. 112-541 ). As shown in Table 2 , the bill included $33.6 billion for HUD, which is about $30 million more than requested by the President, but nearly $1.4 billion less than is included in the Senate version ( S. 2322 ). The most significant difference between the House and Senate versions is that the House bill included the President's request to reduce funding for the Section 8 project-based rental assistance program (discussed later in this report). On June 29, 2012, the full House approved H.R. 5972 . Several floor amendments were adopted, two of which transferred funds between HUD accounts, but they did not affect the overall funding level for the department. On April 17, 2012, the Transportation, HUD and Related Agencies subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an FY2013 Transportation-HUD appropriations bill. The bill was approved and reported by the full Senate Appropriations Committee two days later. As shown in Table 2 , the bill ( S. 2322 , S.Rept. 112-157 ) proposed total net budget authority for HUD at just under $35 billion, a decrease of about 7% compared to FY2012, but an increase of about 4% over the President's requested level. S. 2322 proposed to increase funding for the Section 8 project-based rental assistance program by more than $1 billion above the President's request. On February 13, 2012, the Obama Administration submitted its FY2013 budget request, including just under $34 billion in net budget authority for HUD. The requested level is nearly $4 billion less than the comparable amount enacted for FY2012.