President Biden Announces Strategy to Address National Mental Health Crisis
On Tuesday, President Biden announced his plan to address the country’s mental health needs during the State of the Union. The Administration’s strategy seeks to address the mental health crisis that has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, and includes investing more in mental health resources to compliment the efforts of health insurers integrating behavioral care with medical treatment. The President’s proposal includes providing funding to encourage more Americans to enter behavioral health professions and alleviate a shortage of such providers through loans and scholarships. More broadly, it focuses policymakers — such as Congress and the healthcare industry — on ways to improve and prioritize mental health care. Specifically, the plan focuses on concrete ways to strengthen system capacity and connect people who need help to a continuum of care. It includes providing $1 billion to help schools hire counselors, psychologists and other health workers and $5 million for research on the effects of social media on kids. The federal government will also launch a new suicide prevention hotline number – 988 and will seek to provide nearly $700 million to bolster local crisis centers and to programs that provide training, scholarships and educational loan repayment. The plan also calls for making Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, which are modeled on federally funded community health centers that have become a foundation for basic medical care in low-income communities, permanent. The behavioral health centers rely on peer counselors who have survived their own trauma to pull others out of crisis. Additionally, all health plans would be required to cover robust behavioral health services and every individual with commercial insurance would get three behavioral health visits per year without a copay. Lawmakers have signaled bipartisan support for these measures during several Senate Finance and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committees and House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Ways and Means Committee hearings.
To view the White House Fact Sheet on Strategies to Address Mental Health, click here.
House Select Committee Hearing on Affordable Housing and Economic Mobility
This week, the House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth held a hybrid hearing this week, titled “Promoting Economic Prosperity and Fair Growth Through Access to Affordable and Stable Housing.” The hearing focused on examining the role stable and affordable housing plays in creating paths to economic security and enabling every American to pursue their American Dream. Witnesses testifying before the committee included Jacqueline Waggoner, president of Enterprise’s Solutions Division; Shaun Donovan, former HUD Secretary; Nikitra Bailey, SVP of public policy at the National Fair Housing Alliance; Kevin Nowak, executive director of CHN Housing Partners; and Salim Furth, senior research fellow at the George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. During the hearing, members and witnesses discussed how access to safe and stable housing is a prerequisite to living a healthy life, maintaining consistent employment, and engaging productively in society and the economy, as well as how past state and federal housing policies have exacerbated economic disparity across the country. Witnesses described how the COVID pandemic has demonstrated in the importance of housing to health and prosperity, specifically citing overcrowding and poor air quality in housing as key drivers in the spread of the pandemic. Former HUD Secretary Donovan described how the pandemic brought about dramatic increases in rents and home prices, which only compounded the crisis of unaffordable and unstable housing that had been growing for decades and provided several recommendations to the committee. “To make housing more affordable, significantly increase investments in our proven rental assistance and housing construction and preservation programs,” said Donovan. “To expand homeownership, especially for people of color, ramp up investments in down-payment assistance and housing counseling while reforming tax incentives and mortgage lending and strengthening fair housing and fair lending efforts. To help families live in neighborhoods of opportunity, invest in improving disadvantaged neighborhoods, build more affordable housing in high-opportunity communities and help families move there, and accelerate fair housing efforts that ensure every American has the freedom to live where they choose.”
To view the full House Select Committee hearing on Affordable Housing and Economic Mobility, click here.
Executive Order Issued to Address Supply Chain Disruptions
Last week, President Biden issued an Executive Order outlining new steps for addressing supply chain issues throughout the United States. This comes on the heels of having established a Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force one year ago to strengthen pandemic recovery and address breakdowns in four industry chains: semiconductors and advanced packaging, high-capacity batteries, critical minerals and materials, and pharmaceuticals. To expand access to capital for small manufacturers and provide funding to improve U.S. ports and infrastructure the new executive order boosts financing for semiconductor production and renewable energy, The President also released several reports from federal agencies on the supply chain crisis that were commissioned in last year’s order. Affordable housing advocates, alarmed by the rise in prices for lumber and construction materials, have repeatedly expressed their concerns with the Administration over supply chain issues and the increased costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. While this current Executive Order does not address those specific housing material issues, NAHMA will continue to advocate for the White House and Congress to address rising housing costs and supply chain disruptions.
To view the Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains, click here.
To view a summary of the findings, Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains: A Year of Progress and Action, click here.