Date: 2001-07-27
Speaker: GARY G. MILLER (republican)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman. there is an interesting argument going on. We have a disagreement here. Someone said or we say there are no studies that demonstrate there is a problem. We talk about abuses. I have a list of abuses that I have no question about. On the other side. we talk about a need for funding because there are criminal elements Within public housing. I do not disagree with that. I am going to accept that argument. and from some facilities I have seen. I think the Members are accurate in that argument. I had one in the city of Upland that had a problem. and with additional funding. they reformed that problem. I am willing to accept the argument from my colleagues on the other side that there is a problem in public housing and we need drug elimination funds to eliminate and deter these problems. But the problem with government is that rather than addressing the problem. we continue to put a BandAid over the sore. The problem is. we have forced people into public housing .projects with section 8 vouchers because there is no place else for them to go. A good friend of mine owns one of the largest nonprofits in the United States. and they have probably made 25.000 loans to lowincome families to get them into housing. The name of the company is Hart. If Members go into Harts buildings. every one of the employees in there were single parents. single women formerly on welfare. Every one of them today is in a home. They helped them get into homes. They provided buyers assistance. down payments with zero government funding. The problem we have here. Mr. Chairman. we have an administration and a Secretary of HUD altogether different than the previous Secretary of HUD that we had. For the last 2 years. I have spent more time battling with HUD. trying to make sure nonprofits could continue to operate to help poor people. because HUD did not like the competition. Our Secretary today is different. How do we resolve this problem? Is there a problem with the criminal element within the public housing projects and drugs? I believe that is the case. How do we resolve that problem? Let us help people get out of public housing and into homes. Let us allow them to take the section 8 money and place a down payment on that home. Let us even let them take the section 8 vouchers that we force them to use to live in a dwelling. to use that to pay part of their payment to become productive parts of the community and established parts of the community. Guess what is going to happen when we do that? I think my friends on the opposite side of the aisle have a different problem with this than I do. In 4 to 5 or 6 years. they will have built up enough equity in that home they are likely not to need the governments assistance to live any longer. To some people. that is scary. To me it is not. So what do we do? We say we have a problem with housing projects that are funded by the government. but let us force people to live in those housing projects. because we will not let them use the money to buy a home. That just does not make sense to me at all. Last year some of my colleagues on the opposite side of the .aisle said on the drug elimination program money. when we finally start to succeed and eliminate the problem. let us cut their money off. What we are doing then. we were saying that we are only going to give money to communities that fail to solve the problem. and those that work hard and diligently and succeed in resolving the problem. we are going to cut their funds off. so they have to look to the local law enforcement to deal with a problem that tends to be generated by public housing. If there was not a problem. address this question: Why do not funds provided by local government adequately deal with the problems within these housing projects? Because every community hires police officers. They manage to protect the rest of the community without assistance otherwise than what they receive in funding. What we do is we say that is not adequate. We need to give them additional funding because there is a problem that is worse and needs Federal assistance than the rest of the community is experiencing. That in and of itself is a problem. In this country. we have not been able to provide affordable housing for people. nor have we been able to provide housing stock for most people to move out of affordable housing into the next level. Because the average home owner. when they buy a new home. realizes that 35 percent of the sales price of that home is directly attributed to government. Not indirectly through taxation of others. but direct assessments against the developer in order to get a building permit. 35 percent of that sales price goes to government. That means that if a young couple wants to but a $100.000 home. guess what? $35.000 of that $100.000 went to government. Then. on the other hand we say. why cannot people in this country afford a home? The government is the problem. The government will never resolve the problem unless government does something to let the private sector work.