Senate Passes $423-Million Measure to Aid Homeless

The Senate Thursday passed a bill that would allow the government to spend an additional $423 million this year for housing, food, mental health and job training programs for the nation’s 300,000 homeless.

The 85-12 vote came only after the Senate broke a stalemate over congressional pay increases that had threatened to scuttle the bill. Voting 68 to 29, the Senate ruled out of order a proposal to add to the homeless bill an amendment to repeal the recent $12,100-a-year pay raise for members of Congress.

“America’s homeless have been waiting for a long time to be taken seriously, and this is the first serious effort by the federal government to help them,” said Maria Foscarinis, the chief Washington lobbyist for the National Coalition for the Homeless. The Senate bill, she said, is “a major first step.”

Although the House approved a similar, $500-million bill last month, several steps remain before money can begin flowing to programs to aid the homeless.

First, a House-Senate conference committee will have to reconcile differences between the two versions of the bill.

Congress then will have to enact a separate measure actually appropriating the money. The House Appropriations Committee already has begun considering the necessary spending legislation, and both chambers are expected to act later this month after Congress returns April 21 from its Easter recess.

Once the appropriation bill has been enacted, congressional staff members who have worked on the legislation estimate an additional lag of at least 60 to 90 days before the necessary administrative appa ratus can be put in place and money can begin to flow.

Among the provisions of the Senate bill are $225 million in additional funds for housing programs, $105 million more for health-care and mental-health grants to nonprofit agencies that serve the homeless, $10 million in added money for emergency food programs, a new $10-million program for small projects designed to assist homeless adults in finding jobs, and $7.5 million to help school districts enroll homeless children.

The bill would also loosen food-stamp eligibility restrictions put in place in 1981 that have been blamed for worsening the homelessness problem in some areas. The change in the rules would allow impoverished families to take relatives into their homes without jeopardizing their food-stamp allotments.

“National policies, unwise national policies, have increased the number of the homeless,” said Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), the chief Senate sponsor of the homeless bill. “It’s a national problem created in part by national failings.”

Most experts on the homeless agree that their numbers are growing. The most widely accepted estimates suggest that roughly 300,000 Americans are homeless on any given night and that several million were homeless at one point or another during the last year.

No Veto Threatened

The Reagan Administration has argued that homelessness is primarily a local issue, not one that should be addressed by the federal government. But Reagan has not threatened to veto the bill.

Other conservatives have objected to spending more money on programs that could add to the federal deficit. “The government has nothing to give anyone that it doesn’t take from someone else,” Sen. Steve Symms (R-Ida.) said in Thursday’s debate.

Before passing the bill, the Senate voted for a provision urging that any money allocated to the homeless be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget. But Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), Appropriations Committee chairman in the last Congress, expressed doubt that such offsetting cuts would be found.

Despite the overwhelming support for the homeless bill, the Senate had been stalemated since Wednesday as Sen. Gordon J. Humphrey (R-N.H.) sought to attach to the bill an amendment that would have repealed the April 1 pay increase for House and Senate members.

Voted After Deadline

Reagan recommended in January that congressional salaries rise from $77,400 to $89,500. Under procedures designed to shield members of Congress from having to vote to raise their own pay, the raise was to take effect unless both houses voted against it within 30 days. The Senate voted promptly to block the raise. But the House, where support for the raise is stronger, waited until the 31st day to vote against the pay hike--and it went into effect because the vote took place after the deadline.

Humphrey’s amendment would have repealed the raise. Advocates of the homeless and the Senate leadership feared that attaching the amendment to the homeless bill would have fatally bogged down the measure in the House.

Late Thursday, after threatening to keep the Senate in session until today to force a vote on his amendment, Humphrey unexpectedly permitted a vote on a parliamentary maneuver by Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) to eliminate the pay raise amendment without taking a direct vote on it.

Humphrey’s change of heart came after intense pressure by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and others, who--according to staff members close to the lobbying efforts--were eager to get an early start on next week’s Easter recess.