[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H7555]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              HOUSING CUTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] is recognized 
during morning business for 2\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, last week the Committee on 
Appropriations struck a mortal blow against affordable housing in this 
country. They were swinging at housing but they hit hundreds of 
thousands of elderly, disabled households and hundreds of thousands of 
kids and hundreds of thousands of homeless people.
  Overall, their bill would cut the housing budget of this country by 
over 23 percent.
  The Republicans are ensuring that public housing dies a slow death by 
cutting the funds it needs to do the routine maintenance on a day-to-
day basis and then slashing by one-third the funding needed to 
modernize decaying buildings.
  The bill kills the drug elimination grants programs, despite its 
outstanding success over the past few years, and the bill imposes a new 
minimum rents that force people living in public and assisted housing 
out of their homes, including elderly living on fixed incomes, many of 
whom will have to pay 12 to 16 percent more of their incomes toward 
rent. It means a thousand-dollar-a-year rent increases to most of the 
elderly receiving assisted housing in this country. And then to really 
rub salt in their wounds, it cuts the homeless budget in half.
  The fact is, the vast majority of public housing authorities are well 
run in this country, providing safe, decent, and affordable housing to 
hundreds of thousands of poor people in our Nation. Yet, we see 
politicians that want to run out in front of some gutted old abandoned 
decrepit housing and make the Americans believe that that is all public 
housing.
  There are 3,400 public housing authorities in America, only 100 of 
which are poorly run. There are bad housing projects and we ought to 
get rid of them, and we ought to get rid of the bad housing 
authorities, but we ought not to throw out the baby with the bath water 
and pretend that every single unit of public housing is these decrepit 
housing photo ops that we see politicians running out and taking their 
pictures in front of these days.
  Let us stand up for the poor. Let us not abandon this country's 
commitment to making certain that we have a fundamental safety net in 
America. People look around and they see homeless people on the streets 
and they are outraged. The only reason we have homelessness is because 
we do not build affordable housing for the most vulnerable people in 
this country, and coming in here and wholesale just cutting out the 
housing budget by 23 percent makes no sense.
  Let us make certain that we come at this problem and deal with it. 
But we are throwing away some of the most important housing in the 
country without looking at what makes the cheapest housing for the most 
amount of people.
  Let us look at the problem. Let us solve it, but let us not throw it 
out in order to make a nice, quick fancy speech that will hurt a lot of 
people and will not help our country.


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