of the subcommittee on housing and community after tonight you will come to order we are going to allow opening statement for the record without objection all the members opening statements will be made a part of the record  we are going to allow the ten anton either side we do not have an indication from my members over here who wish to have a statement but we will allow two minutes each if you good morning ladies and gentlemen i want to thank chairman frank and our ranking member biggert for making sure that this have committee hearing was placed on the calendar sorrily i want to thank the other members of the subcommittee who are here today given the importance of section eight voucher reform act issues i would also like to welcome the new members of the subcommittee with not had an opportunity to meet together before we have a few members who were present at the hearing that we had in new orleans but most of our members have not met in subcommittee before as you know the past several weeks have been busy as the committee saw a practical solution to speed the rebuilding process in the gulf region h r twelve twenty seven the gulf coast housing recovery act of two thousand and seven which the committee passed on wednesday is a major step towards the system the people of the gulf with their portable housing needs and in rebuilding their lives today we begin the process of tackling one of the most important federal housing programs in the nation the section eight voucher program serves some two million households last year i was an original co sponsor of the section eight voucher bill h r five four four three which the committee pass although the house did not take up the measure the section eight voucher reform act of two thousand and six represented the most comprehensive reform to the section eight voucher program that we have seen in several here's the major provisions of the voucher bill including targeting inspections tenet rants and moved to work represented a major step in the direction of reform i share this with you because i believe that this year we can pass  the section voucher reform act section eight voucher reform act using a similar strategy with bipartisan support it is important that we move forward on section eight voucher reform if for no other reason than to restore our committed to legislative responsibility for the program many important aspects of the program like the funding formula have had to be addressed by the appropriate us because we did not regard to rise our own program just a month ago the funding formula was placed and the continuing resolution out of course it had not been heard in committee the subcommittee or the full committee our program of this importance to communities all over the country needs to be thoroughly scrutinized i hope that we can lay the foundation to develop consensus around affordable housing programs that work for the nation's poor working families with children and the elderly as well as the  disabled we also must include public housing authorities and hud moving a section eight voucher reform will quickly once by moving the reform once it is introduced the section eight voucher reform bill addresses a number of provisions that are important to me one is the need to improve the mechanisms for inspections of rental units most would agree that tenants need protections and that these protections should meet current housing quality standards that batch of reform ac requires inspection every two years anytime a unit passes inspections related to another federal program like the home program the idea would be to not have to inspect the unit as long as it occurred in the preceding twelve saving time and money and making the rental unit available occupancy as soon as possible protecting the health and welfare of the tenant this would be a major improvement over current practices another major provision of section eight voucher reform i related to rent reform an income review tenant not paying more than thirty percent of income for rent this is essential to ensure that those traditionally served by the program will continue to be served we also consider incentives to work about allowing income increases of less than ten percent to be disregarded as well as last year's income we also exempt the income of full time students attending college and income calculation would also certify recertify income every three years where the major research source of income is fixed another important aspect of section eight voucher reform is the issue of targeted boucher's to those most in need under the bill passed last year seventy five percent of new vouchers would go to families below thirty percent of income that would be authorized but the next five years the bill to be introduced will contain a similar provision in addition under current law medical expenses in excess of three percent of the tennis income for elderly and disabled or deductibles for income calculations the batu reform act will raise the threshold three percent to ten percent for the elderly and disabled as you know the c r we just passed included a measure to change that section a funding formula the c r change the funding formula to base funding in two thousand and seven using the p h a s most recent verifiable twelve month period of boucher spending based on leasing and cost data as a result the actual boucher allocation whitacre annually instead of been based on the two thousand and four allocation formula i believe that the voucher reform is so essential to our ability to assist the poor working families with children and the elderly and disabled to have decent safe and affordable housing of course we would all like to fund about a program that supported everyone wh needs about you but that is not possible we can make needed improvements to the program while restoring faith in the boucher program for the tenants who are in need of affordable housing as well as for our ph i hope that my colleagues will support the section eight voucher been introduced to ensure that these goals are met part of achieving the goal that's reform begins with this hearing and the witnesses testimony i hope that the witnesses will share their insight on this important issue so that we can begin to reform the program at this time i would like your five minutes to our ranking member congresswoman biggert for an opening statement thank you chairman waters and i want to welcome all of today's witnesses here and to thank you chairman waters for holding this important hearing to examine the section eight housing choice that your program i think that we on the subcommittee are acutely aware of the many difficult management and budget challenges inherent in this government program is my hope that we can take this opportunity to work together as we contemplate the future of of section eight the homeownership is a desired goal for all americans there are many in today's society that are not yet ready to own their own home and we must therefore continue to pursue pursue alternatives to make sure that affordable rental housing is available and we must encourage recipients of rental housing assistance to move toward self sufficiency and we must make sure that the assistance is there for those who truly need it as you know the section eight housing assistance program is  major vehicle for providing rental assistance to low income families and individuals helping over two million low income households elderly and able persons secure affordable housing in the private market this program rental assistance is due in varying degrees to the expansion of the program the cost of renewing expiring long term contracts and rising costs and housing markets across the country the day of reckoning is coming fast if we do not addressing crease cos this program it will consume that budget it is already effecting the funding of other programs within the department i trust that we can use today's hearing to engage in productive discussions and to help us find common sense  reforming the section eight program now the day goes by that i don't talk to a constituent an organization concerning the problems inherent in this program such as long waiting lists lack of affordable section eight thousand about your housing lack of  local program flexibility and various p h a funding concerns the longer we wait to address some of these concerns the greater the risk is there is not just not just a section eight but the other hud programs that will surely will be cut to pay for it i hope that we can draft language to address some of the funding shortfalls that occurred as a result of language placed in the most recent continuing resolution over twelve hundred public housing authorities over half of the  nation including all of those in the gulf stream and all those in my district and at least some in the chairwoman district will take a hit in fiscal year two thousand and seven the chicago suburbs are hard hit by this new formula each housing authority  all three counties in my congressional district well receive a funding cut this year the house death already in cook county will lose eight million dollars joliet will lose one point one million dollars or more in two page will lose over eight million dollars these are not dollars these are families and seniors who are being hurt with this bill proposed cuts to section eight housing funds more than one hundred families du page county but one hundred fifty will county and thousands across this country will be kicked to the curb in two thousand and seven with that said my hope is that we will move this bill to the committee process we can make modest changes to develop your funding formula to provide incentives for agencies to operate  efficient cost effective manner while serving the maximum number of low income tenants we also should work to modify inspection rules to give agencies more flexibility which will encourage owners to rent to voucher holders and preserve essential to tenant protections to reduce burdens on agencies landlords and tenants i would support efforts to streamline rent determination and other procedures for the section eight program finally we should promote local incentives that encourage recipients of rental assistance to move toward self sufficiency as we seek ways to improve america's communities and strengthen housing opportunities for all citizens particularly our poor i recognize that the issue of reforming programs like section eight can be contentious however politics is the art of the possible and i believe that today's hearing is a good first step on the road to reforming this country's largest rental assistance program section eight again i welcome all of today's witnesses and look forward to your testimony thank you m colony housing projects in south boston but my mom and dad my five sisters so i have that bias as as a former tenant i must i must confess also when i completed law school i went back to the housing projects and represented tenants my former neighbors as as as free legal counsel on matters of this festus and lead paint in apartments people being under housed so and by the way i think that had a lot to do with me getting elected you never know how many friends you have in this world until you start doing free legal work but that mindset i do believe that there is a there's a real struggle in this country about us housing policy and i think we have  greater greater struggles than we had when i was living there because of the huge disparity and and what what is earned by the families in many of our housing projects and in section eight  versus what it might cost them to move move to private housing and i live i still live i have moved far i still live two blocks from the housing project that i grew up in and yet the rents in my area two blocks away are a couple thousand dollars a month and that's just beyond the hope in the reach of a lot of families in public housing and we're going to talk about that whole feel a little bit later on the bottom line here is i think we can do better i know we can and we have to not only in the situation post constructive way to really recognize that that the federal government does have a right placed on head national housing policy and we want to get to that thank you very much but the gentleman from california mr miller is recognized for two statement thank you over the years congress has grappled with the issue regarding the skyrocketing cost of section eight programs under used doctors in the general management of the program the casa program is growing so rapidly that hud's other programs that could could be public housing arms program c d g hope six and many others are suffering as a result session aides to remain viable we must take steps to reform the program during this time of budget constraints congress is struggling to renew existing vouchers as we try to reform this program we must nine the state look the housing flexibility act of two thousand and five top the section eight voucher housing program work better made available to those in need so because this legislation would improve the delivery of housing assistance to families need by providing flexibility to the local health public housing authority ph a's and holding them accountable for results addition this legislation would allow ph as a service many families as possible within the grant amount rather than being held to a specific number of bouncers rather than h r one thousand nine and then a committee passed a different bill to make change at the margins of section one away program fifty four forty three made important prove mr the inspection process and income verification process to build not truly address the fundamental weakness in the section eight program we pass a bill this year this passed one with true reforms not just one that gives perception that reform was accomplished we can do much more than merely provide changes on the margins we should encourage p h a to cooperate to operate in the fish a cost effective manner to serve the maximum number of low income tenets for example should have the chance to be innovative in their efforts to move families to self sufficiency further we must address a long list of waiting for the second of the section eight vouchers the everything to time for families spent on the waiting list for subsidized housing in the united states is more than two years in cities like los angeles how can we justify a situation where one person is given unlimited federal housing assistance while another who might have greater needs is on the waiting list and force of fend for themselves for almost ten years the answer is not to allow this program to continue to grow out of control whether we must reform the program so the participants can transition self sufficiency within a reasonable period of time giving more families the ability to benefit from our nation's temporary helping hand i believe we we have worked in a positive bipartisan manner this far and i look forward to working it with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on a bill that truly reforms a program as it for we must remain mindful that it is not feasible for the federal government to continue to increase funding for the program without enacting meaningful reforms but it's goal in mind we must seek bipartisan ways to make it is important and once again you have demonstrated your desire to make sure that every person has a place to call home madam chair i believe that h r five forty three is going to prove to be a very important piece of legislation it will change the funding formula such that the money divided among housing agencies will be fairly divided such that some will not be short changed while others are overcompensated it will preserve the income targeting provisions of the seventy five percent thirty percent provisions but it also will have flexibility such that in areas where incomes are unusually low and these areas we will be allowed to use the federal poverty line which in some cases may cause additional families to have opportunities who are indeed still within poverty guidelines it will streamline the inspection requirements and cause the landlords to lease more landlords to lease it will expand the existing authority from thirty to forty for the moving to work agencies and it will permit a voucher and this may be most important to be used for a down payment by a first time home we want to give everybody an opportunity to experience the american dream of homeownership madam chair i am so honored that you have brought this piece of legislation to our attention and i believe it will help many persons who otherwise would not have an opportunity to have a place to call home i yield back the balance of my time thank you and i will the gentleman from connecticut mr shays is recognized for two minutes two minutes thank you thank you madam chairman first let me congratulate you on this opportunity to chair what i think is an important committee for congress and i know you're going to do it for thank you and i'd like to just say to the members that we on this side of the aisle have argued for years that we don't want people living in public housing being warehoused and we've argued that we should participate in the market and section eight vouchers enable you to participate in the market the challenge now is it's become quite expensive because in a sense you don't own the property and so we're having to play for inflation whereas when we used to own public housing we didn't have to deal with inflation aspect of housing as much and so it's just a recognition i think on i think on our side of the aisle we have to recognize that costs will continue to go up but i chose was choice was to put people in a place where others might live who have income and have resources and have a young child for instance grow up in a public house in a in a unit that's not public housing but in the unit where he might see someone like in the case of where need reform and i'm happy that we're looking at this issue and i thank you the secretary i am a former mayor of a community just recently and a former speaker new jersey assembly and i have to tell you that the housing issue where there was section eight or any other issue it is probably the number one issue facing people of poor means in america today they just seems that they have no place to live it seems to me that we haven't done anything lately be guarding senior housing or the disabled and the forms a great in all the directions are great but only if the least the more opportunity it just seems that all these reforms we get less and less the ability to give people housing just yesterday i received a call from one of the citizen my district judge the city they have to layoff thirty four people because of all the cuts people talk about drugs and housing people talk about the insecurity in housing but yet we cut the funding for those places to make a secure i don't know where they are the intention is to turn it over to the local municipality or the state but that's if this is a regular going new jersey it got so bad that i speaker had to institute a long section a program that cuts here the decisions here impact not only new jersey about the state but the local level so i will argue that you know the forms are great but if we're going to to cut the ability for people to have housing i mean  we have to provide the federal government in my opinion as a role to providing housing for the most needy and seniors thank you thank you very much to the gentleman from connecticut mr murphy two minutes f i'm finding it very comfortable in this room is just as medicare women coming from connecticut we have we have great successes and great challenges in the area of housing policy and it was why i asked to serve with you on this committee we've had successes in partnering section eight vouchers with social services in our support of housing units and i would forward to a conversation about how federal government can help states that are doing supportive housing well continue to do that but we have challenges of homeownership in one of the richest states in the nation we have among some of the lowest rates of homeownership and so what i think is so productive about the discussion when it comes to section a reform is the means that we can use section eight as a pathway to homeownership that in connecticut would mean so much to many of our low income citizens but more than that it is an honor to be able to serve on this on this committee and i look forward to the work that will do on this issue and others thank you very much we will now call our witnesses for the first panel i think we have one witness  committee thank you for inviting me to speak today i want to start by apologizing i am getting for the flu i'm not contagious but i might struggle a little bit sometimes with my voice so i'll take a break from time to time it's ok with you excuse me if i may we do not have you written statement you will be recognized for five minutes and with like to have you follow up with a written statement to it yes madam chair we will submit a written statement i believe i spoke to one of your staff and if you will get that to you within thirty days that's acceptable to you thirty days yes i made it before the ok could you give it to us in to day yes manager thank you i think that and i'm assistant secretary for public and indian housing at the department of housing and urban development as you know our portfolio includes a housing choice voucher program which is the focus of the statement in recent years we have seen many positive outcomes in the h p v program budget based allocation of years as provided predictability for public housing authorities we have used tools that help us assure that we are serving those who congress intended to serve improper payments have been reduced significantly down to one point two billion dollars from three point five billion dollars and resulting in hud from move from the government accountability government accountability office as high risk list of government programs but we also see areas that could make the housing choice voucher program even more resilient viable we would like to suggest that the platform for sharing that vitality is the continued route towards simplification and away from regulation the vast majority of public housing authorities are good stewards of federal funds hud believes it is good policy policy to encourage and incentivize that good stewardship in the h p v program if the central theme is simplification then we would that this committee is authorizes craft and pass language that mirrors the budget based allocation set forth in appropriations in recent years the budget based system works ph aides have noted that the predictability of funding has helped  is the current one size fits all for income and rent we suggest should be revisited it is very costly to administer and it encourages the underreporting of income one steak or holder group has published a chart that could not better illustrate the complex labyrinth that is rent setting i'd like to show that to you momentarily this is the methodology for rent setting in section eight it is extremely cumbersome local p h a so i'm sorry and madam chair will willing to have more copies of these delivered to the committee for their ph without objection they will be submitted for the record thank you manager local ph know their markets better than we do here in washington we should let them use the information they know about their communities to better serve the voucher holders of baser we would suggest simplifying the definition of income for purposes of calculation and then give ph is a parameter of rent setting tools like flat rent income tiered rent rent based upon percentage of income is determined by the p h a current housing act rent calculation of the p h a aleck's but always providing a safe harbor for the elderly and the disabled we would also that performance standards should be established that can independently verify how wealthy ha's are utilizing federal funds in order to assure adequate oversight of ph we would encourage focus on four central pillars effective utilization of funds financial solvency of the p h a physical condition of the units in timely and accurate financial and data reporting we would ask that you consider deregulating small p ph age with a cumulative total of less than five hundred public housing units and or vouchers by allowing them find civility with both section eight and section nine money they still would need to meet performance standards and report data provide them step provide those ph a statutory leave and allow them the fungibility so they can work those funds to the fullest extent for the benefit of their communities our sense is that there is some support for asset testing  well we agree that acid testing would be a useful tool to assure that federal funds are going to those who congress intended to serve we agree that biennial as opposed to annual income certifications and unit inspections would be would reduce administrative costs and be helpful but would suggest that with certain exceptions relying on initial and then not conducting subsequent income certifications would work well for the elder and disabled population in conclusion we would suggest that simplification is the route to greater effectiveness of the housing choice voucher program not merely regulation thank you for your invitation i'll be happy to answer any question accept five minutes for question this is a great as a result of the updated voucher formula put two thousand and seven in the structure that is continued in this bill housing authorities that are under lease to various reasons now will have to rely on their repairs to lease up with this in my shed the bill preventive recapture of pre two thousand and seven programmer's there's at least through two thousand and eight if not permanently i don't believe that we have proposed the recapture of the un and there's a gated fund balances and we have no intent of proposing the recapture those on this ng is one balance is the proposed permanent two percent reserve level high enough to run the bounty program responsibly i would i would answer the question in a different way than a fixed number one of the issue is what's the appropriate reserve for the for the agency that is in question a reserve number for the new york city housing authority may not be the one that would apply to a smaller one or a different large  city so i would say that in some cases i'm sure a two percent reserve would be fine but in some cases you may need a greater or lesser reserve thank you very much that's all that i have  guild to the ranking member this biggert five minutes for questions thank you to the president's f y o eight budget proposes to eliminate the cap on the number of families each p h a is allowed to assist in order to assist at least one hundred eighty thousand additional families could you explain the current difficulties with the cap and how it effects the eighty's it may have funding reserves that are currently unable to spend than designated fund balance is an amount of money most ph d s have twenty two hundred out of twenty four rule and so for those that are now they have hit their cap in terms of the ability to issue more about yours by having the cap there we are impeding them from moving forward and leasing removing the cap would give them the flexibility to lease more but it would also impose on them as we would want to impose on the obligation to be good responsible financial stewards of federal funds and so they would be able to determine for themselves to what extent they will lease more beyond that now but you know the ones that really have been good stewards and have gotten everyone you know all the bouncers out to all those that that's exactly what they can and so it seems like we're right now we're penalize in them and particularly with this continuing resolution where they have lost their funding because they've had the reserves fathers you know they're waiting to be able to do on the number of units that p h a was under contract with their current per unit cost to a dollar based formula a stylish by the number of units under the lease on a given date adjusted by the inflation formula what further improvement could could be made the biggest improvement that could be made in providing us with predictability benchmarking every year is going to i think impose an enormous burden on ph asia and also open real issues with respect to how voters are used and utilized such that for example we may be put in a position where the the over under payments that we have just been taken off the high risk list that might become an issue again our suggestion would be that there would be a a a a baseline every three years triennial e the re benchmarking would be revisited based upon that baseline it would be a periodic thing that way if he h h could plan they could understand they would understand that that number is not immutable it changes with time depending upon what needs might be and i think it addresses well the needs of particular ph d s does the the designated fund balance yes did you say that you absolutely support the ha's been able to hold on to their  you know if i listen to my housing tenants in my district again i've got i think i have twenty two thousand families that are classified as extremely low income and i've got thirteen thousand that qualify under a very low income according to the hud standards they feel and the advocates for these tenants feel that there's been a real retrenchment over the last seven years regarding national housing policy some would even say abandonment and we've seen in this committee and you heard from ranking member who's talking about the millions of dollars that not will not be there for folks in her district as well who live in public housing and  it just seems that right now and for the last seven years we've been operating the public housing systems in the united states as housing of last resort the nowhere else to go housing  require them to go to housing of last resort there's no job security so we see people constantly being tossed out of work and then they have to get on the list public housing and also there's no retirement security so no pension secured in this country anymore for a lot of people so we see a lot of seniors getting stuck at the end of their working lives and it's just troubling to see the development of disinvestment in our public housing projects again with those numbers that i talked about w the very low and extremely low in my district i still have the highest private well it's the third highest in the country the rental markets private meant rental market so there's really no no other opportunity for them to to move into private housing and yet hive itself defines affordability is spending no more than thirty percent of income on housing and my district half of the extremely low income households up paying greater than fifty percent so they're well beyond what the guidelines would be and twenty percent of the very low income housing are in the same boat my first question relates to the average rent burden for these voucher holders the numbers we see in my district common to to those across the country and what we can what can we do about that my second question relates to the goal of decentralizing concentrations of poverty when we have the situation when folks are struggling just like when i lived in the housing projects folks were struggling it just seems that it builds upon itself a feeling of some some level of despair the jobs  you know it's just a very difficult situation and i've got places in my district dorchester roxbury mattapan and city of brock those are in boston but also in brockton where gentrification and increasing rance really concentrating people in very poor areas and you know at the same time we have a deficit of over ten thousand rental units that are needed for extremely low income families and  just want to know if you're doing anything that helps the situation to to give families an opportunity to to to maybe diversify their rather i mean all in together and generally in areas where job opportunities and not there can we get people out of those developments and give some of those families a chance to to move out decrease the pressure in those areas and connect these people with the job the jobs that that will get them out of out of those situations and  you know just ease the ease the suffering in some of these developments first you need to know something that will illustrate why i'm answering this in a particular way from boston i grew up in austin basic need of reform we've got about ten million from households out there in desperate need of housing assistance and they're on a wait list with a minimum of two years in los angeles area ten years and can we justify a situation where one person is given unlimited federal housing assistance while another one is putting on a wait list who might have a greater need or one of the ways to address that congressman is that and we're beginning to explore this to start looking at the wait lists and using the tools a should have the flexibility to decide for themselves that they want to impose high time limits yes i thought that when i introduced a bill two years ago trying to go that direction moving to work currently there we don't have a buck thirty two ph a's out of the three thousand to get involved in the moved work program could you give us your observation on the on the move to work program moving to work is a program that allows the funding of the combination of section eight money housing choice voucher money and section nine money operating fine and other funds and it gives them the ability to use the whole pool of money to address housing needs in the community in whatever way that they they really want as think coming back to your first point not only that but we have more and more efficient ph a's being run our current the current system ph is a force skip low income working families who have been on a waiting list for years in order to meet the existing targeting requirements that we face out there do you think congress should change your current target requirements and if you do how would you go about doing that i think that under section eight side targeting is seventy five percent of hers for folks at thirty percent of am i am below while on the public housing side the target is forty percent of units for folks at thirty percent of am i and below i think that there i can certainly understand that certain stakeholders would feel extremely extremely committed to the idea of keeping the seventy five percent number i do believe ability to fully function i think giving some flexibility i'm not saying a set number but some kind of criteria maybe a tiered criteria maybe a set of options would better serve people i think at the end of the day you're still serving the same demographic but you are serving them in a more in a more flexible way one of the reasons that we're married to this particular demographic is simply the standards set by congress  the thirty percent of am i is not regulatory it's statutory and so therefore one of things we should begin talking about is maybe it's not thirty maybe forty percent of the line work more flexibility for ph is based on their local needs without  without question portability we've discussed that in the past and there's been some debate because many is cumbersome for housing authority sometimes housing authority will have a first move to an area that really cost them to doctors for the based on the cost of that area might be a high clustered move a low cost area i do think congress should limit portability moves to issues such as job medical education and do you think it should be even limited to carry this within the same cost range i think portability is an issue that we need to visit per village i think it's much isn't much an issue of the reimbursement it is the fact the fact that there is portability i think one of the things that would be helpful is looking at ways you know for the p h a that is carrying the burden to be more quickly reimbursed for having gone out and done the port but at the end of the day i would worry about restricting ph a too much on portability on the one hand certainly having wide open for debility or imposing outside i may have missed you hopefully you didn't address his new opening statement my first question is do you believe that we or currently  have i'm not as articulate as i should be an army so i'll try  get satisfied that there are sufficient dollars available in the budget to provide sufficient housing for the poor and that we don't need any additional  we can expand the section so you don't need in any additional dollars for vouchers assuming that we get the cas removed the answer is that we are getting additional dollars for vouchers assuming the caps were removed and those things that would have been proposed put enough to sufficiently howe's people who need them in accordance with the budget that's been proposed proposed yes but you are you made up your mind for you left that you were going to answer the question for you left the building so that's fine maybe you answer this one is there any way we can address the problem that many of amount of money for each unit is insufficient to move them into other neighborhoods that may be more socioeconomically of skill so consequently we always end up placing the section eight certificates in the same neighborhood because that's the amount of money per volunteer that will allow us to secure housing so is there a way that we can  actually accomplish the spreading out of section eight that would be supported by her but in terms of raising the amount that each voucher is worth the answer well i'm not sure of the question but i'm there try to answer it section eight has two components to it one is the tenant base rental assistance program yes it is that you're held by a person and they're somewhere anywhere they want so the fact that folks are concentrated or not concentrated is a function of whether the landlord will or will not accept the tenant  rental assistance except that the landlord will not accept a voucher in hollywood and so therefore everybody lives in and another section of the community right and so how do we how do we how do we talk about dispersing the residents all over a community when only one section of the community will have landlord to accept the voucher i would say congressman that that i don't you know the idea that congress would pose on the landlords the obligation to accept all vouchers i think that that's what i think you're saying and i'm not done versus the budget and as you mentioned the appropriators have made changes to the section eight program that moves us from the unit base to a budget based program but i think that you have indicated that  you have a concerned about the draft proposal that we're working on that takes us back to the unit base price can you explain your concerns and how you think that this draft proposal does that takes us  in twenty seconds you need to twenty seconds rather puzzled does go back to a unit based system it basically says every year go out and add two to the number to the number of the dollar number happens all the time and you never answer this question but it was serious i can continue if you like no i want to know afterwards the rest of the story but what i would like to know now is the bottom line is this is a serious problem aside from the fact that section eight consume so much of it we're really finding a lot of families are having to pay more than thirty percent i'd like short answer to the question are you trying to  there is no current effort that i know of where we are undertaking some survey of who's who's inside or outside the band of affordability and that would happen by market that's that is that's a very authority's allowance and secondly another concern i have this that it's my understanding that in some cities they're really not paying the fair market rate they're really pushing landlords to much lower and i the f h a and the rental property lend world didn't ask me to ask this question but it seems to me you should be congratulated so let's just say he did his job and asked me to ask a question thank you congressman and by the way he does a great job for you thank you very much so tell me about it about being removed was it a long effort you want to talk about it or you just it was an effort of years and countless people who did wonderful work at an absolutely had nothing to do with me and i couldn't be more proud of them they did a terrific job this figures would you like any more of my time thank you what i am still concerned about about this issue could you explain your concerns about going back to the base in broader than twenty seconds yes the unit bas will it's not a geometric progression but it's a much faster progression if you do a unit based system because there are issues of how vouchers are issued annually so you will have you will have a situation where there is no regulator not in a legal perspective but in a financial one on what or how about yours are issues and if there is one there isn't a very solid one this is what the problem was that's where you saw the the very much more vertical increase and section eight budget with budget based section here's your budget serve the folks that you need to serve within your budget so one of the things that they were also told there though regrettably in my view is that all incidentally we're going to cap a portion of this we're going to cap your designated fund balances and you can't exceed the issuance of if you hit that cap and that's if that's removed i think it gives a wider bit of leeway for particular cut under the appropriation formula the issue is not cut or increase in terms of a cut the increase in the distribution of money going to various ph days depending would you kindly give some indication as to how your proposal would address first time homeowners using penalties as a down payment we don't have a proposal congressm several first of all section eight has been used for homeowner assistance for the last five years and in fact five thousand folks are using section eight to pay their mortgage they have the ability to do that for ten years and once the commitments made they have ten years worth of section eight vouchers which they can use to read deem mortgage payments this codified policy as i recall that was previously in an appropriations act with reference to persons who in exceedingly low income areas how do you propose addressing persons who are in these very low income areas and because they are making if you're using thirty percent of their local the local median income you still will miss persons who are working full time and may be below the poverty line how would you address those persons thirty percent of income is a statutory thing that is the purpose of section eight is to defray the cost between fair market rent and what the person is can pay so that's just part of how the voucher works with reference to the federal property  do you see a means by which that can be incorporated on the poverty line i love i saw that language and they thought i need to think more about that i'm happy to answer that question later but it's a relatively new new proposal i'm trying to figure out in my head which is going to take me a little bit with the implication of that is and if you'll indulge me i'm happy to talk about the response to you in writing as to what the yeah no i think green benchmarking every three years would work revenging annually i think and i'm not presuming to speak on behalf of those organizations that represent us but my sense of life is that they will tell you that lists to make sure that they are verifiable that they're still active and that they are an accurate representation of those that are still in need congresswoman the waiting lists are very static and what we're trying to do now is use the tool that we use when the cure is administered to verify income to assure that the voucher holder is within the incumbent with on the waiting list to make sure that periodically the waiting list is checked so sure that people who are on the waiting list still qualify for about i have a nother two areas of concern with housing in general and some section eight issues one involves the elderly i  mean i represent west virginia where one of the most elderly populations in the country and we have a real challenge finding the ability for elderly to find sufficient housing that's affordable not only but is safe and accessible for help for elderly what kind of initiatives are either through this program or other programs are you pursuing in a rural kind of setting most voters for for the elderly are not of a different section and section eight eleven but at the end of the day elders are a huge component of all vouchers frankly we've just undertaken those things congress has told us to do with respect to housing the elderly using one of the things we did do is to try to consolidate the effort between h h s health and human services and to make us more like a one stop we can we can port all the services together one of the issues with elders is services and so we're making pretty significant efforts in trying to package that or create that package meet up to your by any leaks annual inspections i think we learned during the katrina hearings that i can't remember the exact percentage that i'm sure but it was very high a lot of the units that were not being were uninhabitable and i think we having that across the country  what's the solution to that i mean you know we talked about one on one replacement we talked about in this new bill we've talked about biennial inspections instead of annual inspections what's your perception of that in the case of  most issue with respect to housing quality as i recall the testimony was with respect to the public housing units this is on section eight so really when we talk about section eight we're time at the private market and their housing quality inspection is actually pretty good the issue though is twofold number one funding inspections is key and that's something that we would encourage continue strenuously the second thing though is uniformity of inspection very often what winds up happening is that we do have inspections we  find things that are just not just it's not that they're innocuous it's that they're inapplicable to a housing setting the best example i can give you this is someone who recently spoke to me this happened four days ago it was a land landlord and they were very brave they said i had a unit i take the section eight voucher you need to know the ceiling fan was off of the ceiling the electrical box door was torn off an outside outlet had live stranglehold that the administration put on the section eight program in two thousand and four the program will return to funding a set number of vouchers rather than providing a lump sum it most drastically decreasing the numbers of bouncers funded this act will target vouchers to extremely low income families increase tenet protections and have quality inspections of both rental and owned assisted housing and the proposal does much more than this i say that because i represent st louis and we are finding a disproportionate contamination and in the home and still allowed tenants to move into the unit and as you are aware a lead is a very serious health hazard especially to children just just what is  high does not require it on the checklist the landlords are required to check for a lead on their property particularly when the property is older than one hundred seventy eight i think there's a disclosure as i recall in most leases there is a provision  where if a child has an elevated any i don't know what standard is but an elevated level of lead then they have to be moved out of the unit i see and as you are aware a lot of local young children who inevitably are exposed to lay and i would really really like to hear more on that from your agency let me let me also ask you about  a question that represented green also i asked about homeownership has there been any movement or decision by your agency  about five thousand homeowners nationally are there any plans to expand on that program that program exists now and to the extent that it can be fully utilized where we're great proponents of home of the property that someone might be able to buy and anything else that they can get in terms of trying to buy that property and the voucher that's a financing issue but wherever the opportunity comes up we're happy to promote it thank you for that response what has we we believe we should stay budget based system we believe that the issue is simplification more than anything else who believe that ph asr good stewards of the of their money and that they know their markets better than we know their market and so therefore we need some rent flexibility and some flexibility with respect to how income is certified we believe that with all of those tools i think everybody wants just a better business model and that's what we're proposing is a better business model to get in to serve more people thank you for your  congressman every quarter we report to congress on exactly what that breakdown is we're happy to provide you a copy of would you be the state i guess i am looking for ways to make the section a program more senior friendly more disabled friendly and more veteran friendly we obviously going to get a lot more veterans want to come in they shoes would you give this body that would make that possible in your eyes i know the section  and disabled i think on the elderly side what i noted earlier about packaging things in a particular way is important and this also would apply to folks who are disabled the issue housing folks who are elderly and housing folks who are disabled are similar in many ways mostly have to do with not just the housing but the services package that comes with it so trying to coordinate what is done with someone who's about your hold or with all of the other things that they might receive i think has value i think it would work well for example someone who is elderly typically are receiving social security up to a certain amount or they're getting medicare help and there's there's a package of services that they're getting in coordinating that with the unit that they're in so that the unit for example is lends itself to the services that they might need is something that has value and where we're working and we've been ago at hud and so we're opening the housing locator to all that friends period that means when they come home they can they can look for a place to live if they need one and in the house locator will i think that i think is the scene you're getting back years under a different program already that's a given vash is the program for homeless veterans and that's a pilot program and it's been around since one thousand nine hundred one so that's a discrete program my sense of life is that there would be considerable stress about from a lot of quarters about the fact that there are a lot of families  housing i'm not sure that i think when when issues in terms of doctors or anything else start falling into areas of set aside it's people tend to react pretty strongly thank you  and it's obviously a procul concern that you understand being originally from massachusetts and connecticut you know obviously we have one of the highest cost of living in the nation but we also have some of the greatest disparities of wealth we have some very poor people living in our cities with some relatively very high housing costs so we've got as mr lynch said people paying fifty percent of their income in housing and i guess i want to understand when you talk about flexibility for ph a's in trying to maybe deal with some of the nuances geographically that sounds to me coming from connecticut as as a means to spread to have a p h a spread valid shares out to fewer people maybe understanding that the the amount they need might be more so that fewer people might end up getting served in connecticut and more people might get service somewhere else and so i guess my question is as we're trying to address the sort of higher cost of living areas is it a matter of just giving flexibility to ph a's or is this a matter of increasing the sort of end strength of the money that we put into the program no i think it's a matter of the flexibility and i don't think that it follows that it be people at all i think one of the issues that is faced by most ph days is that they administer the cost of administering the whole income certification process the whole rent setting process is enormous for them and i think for on the one hand i mean that from an administrator for specter of i really wasn't addressing that issue i was trying to say for ph a's michel ph far better and could tell you more more acutely what what their economics are and we can the fair market rent standards that are used for the payment standard in section a program are two years behind today that's the way it's designed statutorily they they know they know their markets more more the data in their markets recently than that and so what we're trying to say is let them use the data locally that they have to set the standards the same don't look at just saying give them the flexibility to use an alternative set of data in order to make these calls and in terms of income certification currently what we've got is income with any number of deductions and additions and things that affect income in so many different ways in so many permutations one way one day one way and another trying to simplify what that is would be enormously helpful to some most of the most of the issue i was really addressing was the administration of the housing choice program by ph and for a moment i just want to turn to the issue of supportive housing which is a major topic in connecticut we're beginning to do it very well try to partner some centrally state funded social programs with some federally funded social programs with section eight vouchers and maybe by means of just educating me on what our federal government is doing to help partnership with states efforts to try to put together section eight vouchers with some critical social services that hopefully are eventually going to lead be part part and parcel of our effort to move towards home or home or ownership move towards some type of  income growth for these individuals just talk for a moment about what the federal government may be able to do to help a state like connecticut on supportive housing issues again reiterating what i noted earlier we're very much  agreement to the extent so much of that has to do with accessibility to the overall menu subsidy available to a person and so one of the things that we've been focused on is trying to create a spate of options first one who needs supportive housing whomever they might be so they don't have to go to the various windows you go to one place and that is the single biggest effort that we're taking in that regard and that would be very sure that we do within the entire state of not within the voucher would be within the member these are different sets of people so it can't be within the voucher but to coordinate for example with h h s or with any other component out there that that is the provider of that service that's really it's an issue of essentially everybody integrating with one another in order to make sure that whomever the recipient is  subsidiary they're getting what they should be getting they're getting what what is offered to them and they're aware of it that's a big issue is aware thank you gentlemen time has expired mr ellison for five minutes madam ch thank you thank you for coming today i just have a few questions but i don't have much time so i'm currently the policy of hud with regard to verifying whether or not the units have le sometimes we can't you know the federal government can't really adequately know whether landlords are doing this all the time and given the high risk in the serious danger lead presents to developing children what are your views on itself says that the landlord has a responsibility i'm aware that in the way i framed the question to you was not what is the x a i told you what i understood it to say i'm asking you your views on protecting children and between the landlord  you know what your view on the relative power to make sure that we have lead safe homes where there are limits to what he can do because of the act and so therefore that's why i'm answering in that particular way yes but i'm asking you in terms of what in terms of looking toward the future and can't not because of any other reason than i really thought i had really thought about it ok you know that's it if you're not that i haven't thought about lead generally i have concerns about lead but i'm outside in the context of federal laws are you saying you haven't thought about it that's a fair i'm presently thinking about what we can do to protect kids from toxic substances like lead i'm trying to think creatively on what more we could do since it is such so detrimental to our children and i just thought as a person in your position you might have some thoughts you could share and i would be program i know that in minneapolis where where i'm from you know we you know we have a long waiting list what are your views on on the adequacy of the program to fill the housing need people around the country the waiting list issue we actually got an earlier question on this one of the things we'd like to do is to provide greater tools to fix waiting lists are very static we like to provide tools that would give the public housing authority the ability to monitor that waiting list periodic lee so one of the issues that i think we would come up with there is to get a better idea of who is on a waiting list how long whether they even qualify or at certain points in time the second issue on the waiting lists has to do with essentially what what each p h a wants waiting lists really are developed according to the local prerogative of that ph so it's largely administered by them do you recommend that we just have more section eight vouchers to sort of reduce these waiting lists no not not not in the way that you've just frame the question i would not we  are pretty committed to a budget based system because it works you know but i mean isn't the real issue housing people the real issue is running an effective program using federal dollars to house as many people as you can within a budget you know but the real issue the reason the program exists is because there are people with who without housing who need it right i think issues can be framed a variety of ways that would be the way i would frame the issue so in terms of me asking you is the number of section eight vouchers adequate to meet the housing needs of a poor americans you're just not willing to say yes or no and i don't know actually i answered earlier given the budget that we proposed in two thousand and eight assuming that with our regard without regard to the generally yeah you know i think i think it is adequate you think it is out of yes ok let me ask you this one of the things about our public housing in minneapolis again is that maintenance ability to maintain keep the property do you have you thought about whether or not her appropriation to help public housing meet the just the physical plant needs of public housing is is adequate  executive director kean new jersey authority on behalf of the public housing authorities directors association mrs sater man executive director council of large public housing authorities mr john day president do page housing authority mr god for mr richard godfrey executive director wrote island housing welcome to washington from the windy city chicago and he is the leader in my southwest suburban congressional district and for over two decades has helped thousands of my constituents and thousands of others to illinois secure safe and affordable housing he's the president of the du page housing authority in the district and he served in this capacity since one thousand nine hundred five he also executive director of another nearby housing authority kendall county housing authority and he sits on the legislative board of the public housing authority directors association where he served for two years now says work for the illinois housing development authority was involved in administration of low income housing tax credit programs and past president of the northern member and the rest of the members of the committee we appreciate the opportunity to be here and on behalf of the twenty two thousand agency and individual members it represents many of them agencies since one thousand nine hundred three as one of the nation's oldest and largest not for profits representing officials that operate and produce affordable housing and redevelopment that is new to our pleasure to be here and speak to these comments i will keep my comments even shorter than the five minutes to move the discussion along to say that we appreciate it being entered into the record in its entirety we are here to express our support for several it does several things that are important for  stabilizing a program that for the last three years was thrown into a series of gyrations that have caused an imbalance of funding amongst agencies some getting more than they can spend others getting less and they need in order to meet the needs that they have out there we also believe that instituting this twelve month formula as it was under age under the house resolution twenty and that it does stabilize the program further at this time unfortunately hood has not put this into effect yet and is still funding in many ways under the current form amounts that were there before we have seen as a result of the current funding formula that still has not transitioned itself to what was authorized by congress a loss of over one hundred fifty thousand vouchers as a result of this imbalance that was created with this reintroduction of maximize leasing opportunity for agencies to be able to meet their demands it further addresses the challenges of administrating the program and allows agencies to be able to not just deal with the day to day challenges but also deal with very specific challenges within their community such as the hard to house and others that was eliminated through appropriations in prior years it does go forward to creating additional rents simplicity and allow for household three certifications that are much more effective for our operations as as providers of affordable housing it does create additional flexibility in housing quality inspections and as  the effective date of this law should move forward we would recommend that if if if we were able to get this going and get it through that it take effect january first of two thousand and eight in its entirety there are other other topics in sever that that we have addressed in our written testimony such as the additional reforms that hurt can do now it's great to hear that they still want to create additional reforms but yet to date seven years later many of them have not been put into effect which they could have we've submitted those for the record as well we look forward to getting that done as soon as possible to create greater flexibility the moving to work program we appreciate that several has addressed it our priorities are to take care of those that are existing now make this a permanent legislations for those that are existing and work to expand it to create greater flexibility for those that should want to pursue and finally on public housing reform we have some additional recommendations that we've made to help improve several that we would hope that the committee would take into consideration as we move forward and finally say that our goal here is not just to maintain the program but to work on building the program to allow for additional housing production to occur in our nation one that is sorely lacking as there are more people in our nation now that need housing than ever before and are not being met by these challenges and with that madam chairwoman again thank you for having the national association of housing redevelopment officials here before you and i will be pleased to answer any questions you may have for me thank you thank you very much mr kirk is that mean a first name basis for i mean director of the keene housing authority in kenya hampshire and also vice president of fatah which is the public housing authority directors association and i'm here to speak on behalf of the members our socialisation was founded in one hundred seventy nine represents over eight hundred housing authority chief administrative officer so we're grateful that this subcommittee is interested in pursuing this bill it is a  wonderful reform initiative that started during the last conscious congress and remains a matter and that all of us are interested in the draft the language that fatah has reviewed reflects significant improvements over the bill reported last year and in general we support the legislation in a large large manner specially pleased with the treatment of assets treatment of base housing allowance income and other provisions including the section eight inspections provisions the simplification of the medical deduction elimination of imputed income from assets and the other things are very attractive changes there are a couple items which we have some concerns about and would be glad to work with the committee and seek to rectify them one of them is the effect of the rent reforms on public housing we did some analysis of figures coming back from the office of the office of budget office and didn't now assess and an estimation that these could significant potentially cause between one hundred two hundred million dollars loss of revenue public housing authority so we think this had some extra scrutiny and be glad to work with you on that another thing that we would like to see that was not in the draft is what was retained in the bill last year which was the moving to work and i would like to echo some of the things that were said by mr ramirez we would like to see the permanence of the program would like to see it expanded we would like to see an  evaluation put into that to be able to analyze some of the things that have been done in a very innovative way by some housing authority i'm speaking on a non biased basis having been an m t w agency since one thousand nine hundred ninety but we would like to see this not continue to be such an exclusive club with just less than one percent of the housing authorities involved with the flexibility that's been enabled by moving to work but instead increased and would be glad to work with you on that language as well we also thought of supports the section eight provisions that return the program's funding allocation system to a unit cost basis with provisions for monitoring modest reserves allowances that help agencies recover utilization losses two thousand and three and thirty percent of the section eight housing assistance programs and we estimate there are likely to be another million households waiting behind those households trying to get in we welcome this new congress and your renewed emphasis on the central importance of preserving protecting and expanding affordable housing opportunities public housing authorities are facing an as it ended budget and program challenges primarily the issue of in adequate resources over the past six years we have lived with the implementation of administrative administration policies and funding levels that are essentially death by a thousand cuts forcing housing authorities to struggle to keep their doors open while continuing to serve community needs despite a very difficult budget and regulatory environment over the past six years outing authorities such as fox's plan a district of columbia and a long list of utilize tools like zero six and them are moving to work program to greatly improve their public housing infrastructure and the delivery and administration of local housing programs we believe several marks a significant step forward in simplifying the administration funding of the section eight voucher program we support the provisions requiring inspections every two years and allowing authorities to rely and other governmental inspection we welcome administrative changes to rent setting and income determination making it easier without impacting funding levels given the public housing is currently operating at a historic low of eighty three percent of operating me and the administration proposes in their f y o eight funding to fund public housing at eighty percent of operating need we are very concerned that these rants simplification provisions could lead to further reductions in operating science and could have the unintended effect of serving fewer families we appreciate that these concerns have been taken into account and understand that the bill introduced a formula that will be more accurate by using leasing and cost data from the preceding calendar year thereby removing a two year lag in funding we must move back to a unit based funding system as how much money they will receive under a new twelve month formula and see a chaser very concerned about implementing aggressively sub plans without knowing how much money will be available to cover new voucher obligation anough time to increase leasing spend down fund balances and align their programs to a new formula and ultimately serve more low income families class a strongly endorses the subcommittee's inclusion of a one month reserve for the first year of the formula an ace maintain a one month reserve during each year the program for a program of this size and scale a one week reserve is simply too small while with the bill does not yet include the revised bill does not yet include a moving to work section we are hopeful that the final version of the bill will include a provision to permanently authorize and expand the program mt w is our laboratory for innovation and more ph a should have access to these tools a review of the current m t w site shows that they have raised the standard of housing services use program flexibility to create jobs added affordable housing stock or more households and help families build savings  that they can operate and manage in a way that's accountable without needless and time consuming hud bureaucrat measures that add cost but add no value the concerns about tana protection targeting and rigorous evaluation should be addr and the m p w provision that is why we have submitted just as language to address these concerns thank you very much for the opportunity to testify and we look forward to your class thank you very much mr johnnie day  chairman waters ranking member biggert member of the committee i would like to thank you for this opportunity to address you today and thank you mrs biggert for the wonderfully duction you gave me my name is john dame president the du page housing authority the d h and also the executive director of the campbell housing authority the case both of these are suburban chicago county wide housing authorities which administer only a housing choice boucher program currently due to portability the d h is a ministering about twenty nine hundred vouchers  preservation of affordable housing and employment program for business incubator in our offices overall propose legislation as many positive items for a p h a and i support its passage for a few areas i'd like to discuss further in terms of operations there are some very positive things with and with respect to inspections being able to pay for units that he had failures of non life threatening reasons will allow ph a greater flexibility in helping to miniaturize the disruption of ultra holders lines some even end up having to rent two units while the repairs are being performed and only one unit can be subsidy subsidized at a time this last year the d h a perform yearly forty five  hundred spec sions eleven hundred forty six of those failed due to non life threatening violations two hundred forty two of those were new move since whose lives were disrupted this can also be used as a tool to recruit new landlords as were by an inspections last year sixty five percent of the du page housing authority units passed on their first time our inspection staff knows who the good landlords are and who are the ones who need more work is also a check and balance with respect to administrative reviews on this so i believe this is very helpful and for income reviews last year interim recertification is a substantial part of what we had to do we did over two thousand almost half of our total income reviews were majority these are for reductions this will significantly reduce the paperwork that is involved that we have to deal with about forty two percent of our households are on a fixed income the vast majority are either elderly or disabled by having endured having reviews of their income once every three years the net result will be reduction of administrative responsibilities about a fourteen percent saving in staff overall staff time and i keep mentioning administrative relief to ph a's there's concern in the public housing industry in talking to others in the field that if you reduce some of the efforts we have to make there's a possibility there reduction in fees to follow i would say that if we free up staff time as i hope this legislation will allow us to do other efforts and initiatives that we wish to do those being working more on portability and our increasing our outreach to landlords the d h is one of those housing authorities that will lose money because of the continuing resolution we have unspent balances which we would like to do however before we can do this we need to know that we can go over our camp we have people on a waiting list we're pulling names off of waiting lists constantly we want to use our funs up but the question is can we go over that camp last adam i like to talk about is portability mrs biggert will join me in saying to page county is a desirable place to live since two thousand and three we've had people poured into du page county with their vouchers from thirty eight other states and from thirty other housing authorities within illinois just last year we had five hundred nine total ports in to do page county where we had one hundred eighty eight ording outs to put it in perspective about one out of every five votes or users in du page kendall counties our ports from another county now is in or stand there's a proposed amendment which require absorbing all incoming portable vouchers the problem we have with this is because if you can see from  large number of ports and we have we would never put one from our waiting list and i don't think that's fair to the residents of du page county just continue having the ports now for p h a absorbs incoming portable vouchers and receives funding for those new voucher holders the next year allocation i think this solution to this problem would be overcome in closing i answered consideration of one additional item when the legislation is approved i'm optimistic about that please leave the program alone for three years so p h s can truly make it work i'm confident will be pleased with results i would also like to extend my appreciation arthur down who's sitting behind me the chairman of the do pay child an authority board of commissioners for joining me today thank you again for th hall meeting earlier this week to talk about housing issues and also for meeting with my counterpart from california terry parker and our executive director barbara thompson so that we can housing reform going forward i also had the opportunity this week to speak to my two congressman congressman kennedy and congressman landrigan and they are extremely supportive of the efforts that you are taking and the direction of this bill i also yesterday spoke with the heads of our two largest public housing authorities providence and newport and they are very supportive of the direction of this bill i have submitted detailed testimony that addresses the direction of the act but i do want to enough in america today and going to a budget based formula instead of a unit based formula has reduced the number of voters in rhode island by twenty percent over the past two years there's also been some questions raised about the validity of waiting lists well we opened our waiting list three years ago and the last time we did that was ten years ago and ten years ago people camped out for five nights just to get on the waiting list for a voucher three years ago we thought we had a better system we had an open application period and then we moved to  people kept out again because they were so desperate for union and when all is said and done people having to wait ten years for a you and i spoke to the people who are online and they were young women with children they were grandparents and it's very hard to tell them you know you need h today but the earliest i can get to you is ten years from now and unfortunately immediately after we went through that waiting list system you went to a budget based formula that budget based formula pushed that waiting list from ten years to fifteen years so the people who i took onto the list in two thousand and five are going to have to wait till two thousand and nineteen before they can get a housing unit those women with children those children will be grown and those grandmothers will not likely be with us anymore there's been talk about moving to work well if you need a place to move to rhode island we have people who are living in shelters and going to work the average wage earner in the island earns ten dollars an hour if you work forty hours a week at ten dollars an hour you would have to pay sixty percent of your income for the average rent in rhode island hundreds formula they call it fair market but it is neither fair we need flexibility but for too long flexibility has meant there's nothing left to cut and we can't have that anymore we need flexibility but we also have to have your programs your programs to have an affordably house america so that when i walk the waiting lines and i talk to people i don't have to say gee i'd love to help you but it has to be two thousand  madam chair and i want to thank you and i want to thank chairman frank from moving so quickly and bringing a new vitality and hope to hauser going to america for too long we have been on the defensive and we've had cuts and hurtful regulations but in speaking to my delegation this week and speaking to my counterparts across the country there is a new hope for a long cold winter in washington and i'm not just referring to the weather there is a warm breeze coming and i hope it blooms into housing for all americans thank you very much thank you very very much i will yield to my staff five minutes of questioning let me just say to all of the panelists tell me we have something of a hybrid that is being proposed in the bill everybody shaking they had to like but tell me about this hybrid that i don't really really understand at this point that i'm going to pay very special attention to where where you're really capped at a dollar amount and unable to reach the number of families that you could with those dollars and again the current distribution formula has shown to prove one that was distribution of those dollars still sensitive to the budget but read acknowledging that we're trying to reach more families to serve better and i do understand that's not good enough well certainly it does not go as far as as the legislation prior to it being amended several years ago which was a completely unit based system that allowed for full funding on on those bases but it does go a long way to to bring some stability and also maintain some rigor on the funding side thank you ms adam and i just want to add prior to two thousand and four when we moved to what was essentially a snapshot formula housing authorities had a contract with  identified how many years they had and they understood that within the sphere market random payment standard constraints that every one of those vouchers would be funded and at that time housing authorities were utilizing ninety seven percent of those vouchers meaning ninety seven percent of that allocation was out on the street being used by housing authorities and households who were eligible currently we have an average of ninety percent utilization in two thousand  congress said you have a snapshot we're going to look at three month period of where you are list what you are leasing in this three month period and your funding is based on that amount this year regardless of who's on your waiting list  and what you need in your community you're only going to get this amount of money you decide how many households you're going to serve what this says is move us back to a more accurate leasing data instead of a very isolated short period of time but it does not get us all the way back to uniface system that says the federal government has said if you conserve x number of households in your communities and we will provide the funding in order to do that and that is really  that or perhaps not eligible you need more income verification perhaps they have dropped out they don't require your assistance anymore how good are you waiting list how good can a waiting list be if it's seven years old and that's part of the problem when we talk about years on the waiting list that takes into account all of those checking that comes down the line in fact that actually understates the length of time because what as a person moves to the top of that waiting list we start the screening early for eligibility so that means we shift off those who are no longer incomes but what the ten year waiting list means a fifteen year waiting list means is if you're on the bottom of that list it's going to take you ten years to find an apartment so yes there are a lot of people on there who when the time comes may have not may or may not have been qualified seven years ago but it takes ten years to get from the bottom of the list to even being considered for an apartment and then the tragedy is because all the f m r is in rhode island it takes that person six to nine months and we've been having people turn them back because they can't find a landlord who will take the vulture at the f m r it's just too low thank you very much this bigger balances can be can be use for the vouchers that you have above the cap but right now we've got the c r which is really going to take away that pool of money that is that you reserved for those people equating to between one hundred one hundred ten vouchers plus we will be able to help people we won't necessarily have to put people on the street but what it means is it's going to be longer for people coming off of our waiting list because we don't have that pool of funds to do how many people do you have  the waiting list right now approximately eleven hundred but we've not taken names on our waiting list since two thousand and two two thousand and two yes so that means that that does people that you could serve if that cap were eliminated right now you would be able to give them the bouncers but you can't do that and then the pool of money will be gone how would that long winded take you to get back to a reserve to be able to you'd have to increase your numbers and to get the funding for two thousand and eight my estimation is close to a year we have a turnover in our program proximately one percent a month in addition something i'll add something i was notified yesterday and it was not discussed earlier on absorption of portability i was notified yesterday a neighboring housing authority absorbs seventy eight of our ports we've now got to make up those numbers also and i've got to do that in opposition also losing additional money so i'm kind of getting it from both sides not make application at that time i've washed it since then i've been very impressed with a lot of the results and abilities to help a limited a lot of the obstacles in helping provide quality services to our clients  thousand nine hundred forty seven percent of the families in my family housing or working full time now sixty five percent are income has increased by almost thirty percent in our families because we have policies that don't discourage it  consistently have right around one hundred five two hundred eight percent utilization of section eight because of the flexibility allowed i'm not saying that to promote the policies of kenya housing authority but what i'm promoting is the fact that we were able to recognize our local conditions cap we would serve more people and that would be the only consequence if you keep the cap in place and i lease up above that i have to pay for that out of our ministry to face thank you and frankly answered all the questions that i asked this undersecretary few minutes ago so i appreciate it very much the only remaining issue for me  that is the issue of scatter site housing with the section eight vouchers do any of you have any recommendations on how we solve the problem of having that yours actually only allow us to move into the poorest neighborhoods and then the demands from the public is you know it's ok we don't mind having sex in our community but we want we want them scattered out and you can scatter them because the voucher is one allow you to about to move into property outside of the with our participants and not with the landlords they are allowed to choose where they want to go there aren't restrictions on on the units that they may choose and if they want to be close to where they work or where their kids where their kids go to school they have the ability to do that and the freedom to do that on our program but  you have an i would i would go one step further in the interim and that is that it's a matter of dedicated resources and trying to reach as many people that are served currently the vouchers can only go so far within the community and as you move into other other parts of the community that costs more to rent that the subsidy cannot go deep enough to be able to house families it can be served there so it's one question of resources into i've seen many an agency around the country through our membership really get quite aggressive in trying to attract landlords throughout the entire community and as a result it has produce some fruit but it's really a question of resources and having the community make the difficult choice of do we serve more in pockets of the community that can house more or do we serve fewer and spread i'm wrestling with the fact that i said listen to people being on the waiting list for five ten or fifteen years it sounds more like they're trying to join a golf course or get a boating  e if if there's so desperate to be in housing now describe to me where they're living and am i to assume that after five or ten years you still qualify for public  you can say one thing over another many of the people are living in overcrowded conditions or substandard conditions we have people who are working full time living in homeless shelters the case they're paying an extremely high amount and over the course of the waiting list there are many people who do move off who no longer qualify as a more stable situation but there are others especially the elderly the disabled or the homeless veteran whose opportunity for increasing their income does not come along so they remain on the list because they have their income is relatively static one there's this constant misperception that's being promoted by some that this program has eaten up the hud budget and that somehow it's barreling out of control in costs and i would be glad to submit the g a o report that was put out recently that shows that year after year adjusting for inflation the section eight program has only grown by four percent and that's counterintuitive to me just for inflation the my units in stanford could go up ten percent and inflation and the market under the section eight program would reflect that your increases in rent may have gone up ten percent but in radio texas they went down twenty percent and so it adjusts for the markets throughout the nation well what happens is we get less units and i don't but i'm just making the point to be so you made a point and i accept in the look into it i mean was submitted for the record if you'd like but i get to this issue by not owning we are like the person who's a renter all their life there they don't enjoy the shouldn't the taxpayer housing policy dresses both the demand and the supply side and we've invested a great deal in the voucher program it's a very successful programs that addresses affordability but it also has to be responsive to an inflated market when we own units we can control costs and now we were at a point the average unit cost for public housing is significantly less than it is to pay for about year and so we would like to see partly because we've had significant cuts but it also is a way to control costs and control the property and i think it's very important that we look both through hope six through perhaps targeted tax credit programs for public housing and through the moving to work where we can difference of opinion on the moving to work program and ms that a man favors inclusion of the moving to work program in the legislation can you make the case for him to do well i can make the case i can go back to one nine hundred ninety eight when the public housing reform bill was passed and there was a bipartisan consensus a public housing had been saddled with unreasonable and burdensome regulations that did not add value the whole moving to work notion is to say i'm in a local market i have to live in my local market i have to be responsive to my customers my residents and my local elected officials and let me have a plan that responds to that if i have too much public housing and not enough outers i can fix the mix if i need more supply and i need less vouchers i net less than a base i can fix a mix if i have a high unemployment market i can target training dollars if i have a slow employment market i can target dollars to provide self sufficiency if i have a big senior population i can provide supportive services today i can only spend my dollar the way tells me i can do it in a very perscribe way and often not responsive way i believe i know there's concern about the program i believe there is a way to balance those concerns by having kind of protections by keeping targeting provisions to ensure that very low households are served and that housing authorities are accountable both to their residents and to their local community and still provide the flexibility that they need to operate within their local market so in actuality the working i would marry add that on the on the flexibility side that we had the assistant secretary or talk a great deal about creating flexibility and pushing for flexibility there are things regulatory that hud can do now that they could have done seven years ago to relieve that burden and create greater flexibility and allowing agencies to do more to serve low income families seniors and disabled and in our nation and that has not happened date to the to the to the level that it's talked about and the words are much more rhetorical then the actions that come out of those words so the so the words sound good but in actuality they don't apply you for their response i represent as i stated earlier the city of st louis and on any given day in our public schools about twenty percent of the student they are on a waiting list but they go to school every day from the shelter one of the items which would help turn the vulture into a production program is to allow greater flexibility in terms of the project basic that way we can work with our housing authorities to build more units bring all of the resources together whether they're tax credits and home and build new units and we have housing authorities province housing in newport housing authority willing to work with us but as soon as they set aside project based units i counts against them in their c maps core and they lose those units so they they can't participate in linking those units to production and to production of units which may provide the direct services that people need or in areas that are not deeply concentrated pockets of poverty if we're going to increase housing opportunities in the an easy task to accomplish but we working with hard working with the local authority we did it we agreed to up up front and so for we have replaced four hundred units of the five hundred units of public housing in this development and we're very proud of that record the gentleman's time has expired the chilling note that some members may have additional questions for this panel which they may wish to submit in writing without objection the hearing record will remain open for thirty days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record i would like to thank you all for coming today for spending your time helping to educate us about what really goes on in the real world so that we can incorporate that into i think in and that's legislation thank you very much thank you very much i will call on the third panel ms sheila crowley president of national low income housing coalition  miss barbara so hard director of housing policy center on budget and policy priorities miss janet shaw alton president triton advisors on behalf of national east housing association and national multi housing council mr andrew sperling director of government relations national association for the mentally consortium of citizens with disabilities m poverty and race research action council welcome thank you very much without objection all members opening statements will be made a part of the record let us begin with mr crowley president national low income housing coalition thank you very much madam chairman and ranking members to girton members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to testify today about your legislation to stabilize and strengthen the housing choice about your program let me begin by expressing our sincere appreciation to you and the members of your staff who have done a really terrific job of drafting sound legislation for this congress the bills on the bipartisan legislation h r five four four three introduced in the last congress as well as a considerable work done over the last two years by most of us testifying here today and many others who have been wanting to protect and improve the baster program the software process in which you have developed this legislation has produced a very good result which will restore the credibility and the predictability of the program and restoring the credibility and predictability of the program is essential to getting to the solutions that have been to the questions that have been raised by many members of the committee today which is what do we do about all the people on the waiting list we have to get the voucher program back to a state of good functioning so that we can in fact begin to argue for increasing vouchers and that's the fundamental question how do we grow the program as opposed to reduce it which has been the effect of these policies over the last several years just a quick thing about the scope of need seventy one percent of all extremely low income households in the united states pay more than half of their income for their rent those are households with incomes up to sixteen thousand eight hundred sixty dollars in los angeles and up to twenty one thousand seven hundred twenty dollars and you pay county these are people who are elderly disabled on fixed incomes and people in the low wage workforce seventy one percent pay more than half of their income for their housing those are the people on the waiting list that's why they are on the waiting list because they they cannot continue to sustain that kind of cost for their housing among the many positive attributes of this bill are that it corrects the funding crisis that was created by hud snapshot formula it simplifies the process for determining ran for each resident while incentivizing work and protecting elderly and disabled people with high housing costs it streamlines the inspection process for owners who maintain who operate good properties it maintains the housing choice routes of programs income targeting to serve those with the most serious needs while adapting that to meet the needs of poor and rural communities this year is that all units of public housing that are lost a demolition or  are replaced by vouchers not just those units that happen to be occupied at the time that they were close it provides a recapture of a news about your funds so that agencies that can use them are able to use them and that we  can work on the mobility and family self sufficiency objectives of the program it helps tenants with good rent payments stablish themselves a good credit risk and it facilitates greater use of the project base badgers to support production of the new rental housing a major improvement of the proposed legislation is that it does not include the moving to work program we strongly urge that you not include that as you go forward our friends in the public housing industry feel very strongly and quite  genuinely that they need the deregulation from expanded moving to work in order to survive if you've been paying the slightest bit of attention you know the public housing as an institution has been under serious assault in the last six years systematic reduction of public housing funding streams has left many public housing agencies depleted and unable to maintain basic services and to even routine maintenance this is unacceptable the national income housing coalition stand side by side with our public housing partners to demand restoration of sufficient funds for them to be able to do their jobs however we see expanding moving to work to other public housing agency as an off target response to the real problem of several disinvestment in public housing public moving to work as a demonstration programme we do not quarrel with promoting innovation and we think that should happen nor do we doubt that some moving to work sites have shown very good results what we objected was to complete failure of h to do what the legislation intended that is to evaluate the experiments that moving to work ph a's have undertaken in the absence of evidence of a fact of notice how can congress consider expanding it at the very least we urge the committee to hold a hearing specifically on moving to work here from p j directors and tenants from local officials and local housing advocates from the hon inspector general who has lots of things to say about moving to work and the researchers who have tried to assess its effect on this form your own impressions of this program before considering expanding it we oppose any expansion to moving to work until unless until current programs are properly evaluated and lessons learned are incorporated into the expansion program we look forward to working with this committee as you develop this bill for this very important hearing to respond to and fix the problems that have occurred in the last several years and many that had been in the program before that what i would like to briefly address is some of the questions that have a reason concerning the voucher funding formula briefly on rense and then on some additional changes that we hope you will include in the bill when it is filed you have heard a great deal already today about the real effects of the funding formula that was in use in the last three years i think we're now in the position where we have to move off of theory and look at what has occurred and how do we fix the problems one hundred fifty thousand vouchers lost one point four billion dollars in  unspent funds accumulated in the last two years and our analysis shows that only one third of that money is in reserve because it could not be stanched because of the authorized cap issue two thirds  not stand and could have been why wasn't it bad that's the big question and the answer is that what has occurred in the last three years was a system without the right incentives it was an in distribution of money in which agencies got the same amount regardless of what of how they performed that isn't the way we ought to run a government program and what the policy does i balance to get at the efficient distribution of money and the right incentives to control costs while at the same time responding to some of the needs that have been expressed on the committee that where in areas of the country where costs grow faster you have to meet that need or you shrink the the number of vouchers mr shays said where you have concentrations of outsiders and you want to expand where they can be used as mister cleaver was mentioning those problems get answered by the formula in several there are a couple of issues that the members have raise that i think are are important to look at more closely in the most seven funding resolution it is true as as you said representative biggert said about half the agencies got less than they would have under the old formula but there's the other half that got more and if that's always the same the case if we don't have more money to spend and if you look at the fairness of the situation the agencies that got less this year are those that have large often a very large reserves and in every case that we have looked at the reserves far exceeded far far far exceeded four times the difference in funding whereas the agencies that got more money are those that have been cut each year and were facing having to cut another thirteen thousand vouchers if it hadn't been changed but the important thing is that that is only a piece of what needs to be done this committee really needs to make the vaster funding formula part of the permanent authori the formula be re benchmark annually every two years every three years and there's no magic answer to this what i want to emphasize is the interrelationship between the answer to that question and other features of the policy if you do not read benchmark annually that means you're going to fall behind what is really needed to pay for the vouchers and you and mr to brown actually told you why that's the case and the answer is that the inflation factors that hud uses are two years out of date so if you wait two years you're inflating an out of date data and the inflation factors only look at rent costs in the market they don't look at ten  incomes so if you've had a change in the community because a factory closes and you read benchmark only every two years you're doing nothing to make up for that agency's added need for funding well you could do that if you wanted to but then the agency had better have a substantial reserve or it is going to have to cut at exactly the time it needs more money and one of the things that severs does in a constrained fiscal environment is a void the old policy of having to spend extra money to fund reserves it creates a mechanism where the agencies that need the most money get it through a recycling process that is the cost efficient way to do it and only authorized cap issue fully supportive of agencies being able to serve as many needy people on the waiting list as they can the hard question is what does exceeding the authorized cap in one community do to another community unfortunately we're going to have to go to the floor there's a vote on we have about five minutes to get up to the floor and i understand it is a series of votes and it's going to take us anywhere from thirty to forty five minutes to get back i would like to say to you that if if you need to take a break this would be the time to do it we would hope that those of you certainly who have not testified which day we would hope that you who have would say so that we could ask some questions i will return at least several of us will return to complete the the hearing with you it's unfortunate but just the way it works so i think the time certain to return would be one forty five thank you thank you testing one two three check one two three one man test one test to check check