PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2851, STOP THE IMPORTATION AND TRAFFICKING OF SYNTHETIC ANALOGUES ACT OF 2017; PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 5735, TRANSITIONAL HOUSING FOR RECOVERY IN...
Andy Barr (Republican, KY) \u2014 2018-6-13

I rise today in support of House Resolution 934, the combined rule for my legislation, H.R. 5735, the Transitional Housing for Recovery in Viable Environments, or THRIVE, Act. prgtoken I want to thank Chairman Hensarling, Chairman Duffy, and my colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee for their support and feedback on this legislation, as well as Chairman Sessions and Ranking Member McGovern on the House Committee on Rules for their consideration of my manager's amendment to make improvements to this bill. prgtoken This week the House is considering several important pieces of legislation to address the opioid epidemic that takes the lives of 116 Americans every day. My home State of Kentucky has the third highest overdose mortality rate in the country. prgtoken In order to achieve meaningful progress in the fight against opioid addiction in our Nation, Congress can no longer simply focus on prevention, enforcement, and treatment. We must also begin to implement policies that focus on long-term recovery. Our Federal housing programs are an underutilized resource in these efforts. prgtoken The THRIVE Act would make supportive housing more accessible to those in need by allocating a limited number of Section 8 housing choice vouchers to nonprofits that provide housing, workforce development, job placement, financial literacy, and continued addiction recovery support for individuals who are transitioning out of rehab and back into the workforce. prgtoken Rather than allocating the vouchers through public housing authorities, this demonstration would give vouchers directly to housing nonprofits that meet evidence-based metrics of success on a competitive basis. The vouchers would also be distributed with a focus on regions of the country with the highest rates of opioid-related deaths. prgtoken This legislation would only allocate either 10,000 or 0.5 percent of total housing vouchers, whichever is less, to people who are literally dying every day of opioid addiction and other substance abuse disorders. The demonstration is limited to 5 years. prgtoken No one would have a voucher taken away from them to create this demonstration program. This is an important point that I would like to emphasize to my friend from Colorado, who is concerned that there might be a cannibalizing effect of existing vouchers. prgtoken An estimated 198,000 Section 8 vouchers are turned over each year and returned to HUD. It is from this amount that the demonstration would set aside only 10,000 to address a deadly national public health crisis. prgtoken The goal of this demonstration is not to take away vouchers from those who need them but, rather, to open up other housing options to people coming out of rehab who would otherwise be forced to use Section 8 vouchers to live in a housing situation where they would be surrounded by individuals who are still in active addiction. prgtoken If our goal is to help people coming out of