[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 17, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE LEGACY OF JIM ROUSE

                                 ______


                            HON. RICK LAZIO

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 17, 1996

  Mr. LAZIO of New York. Mr. Speaker, when I decided last Wednesday 
that I wanted to come to the floor to speak about Jim Rouse, I realized 
that there is a lot to talk about. Jim's involvement in housing and 
community building spans seven decades and represents some of the most 
important changes in how this country lives.
  Jim Rouse's legacy is enormous, but it is more than creating the idea 
of a shopping mall. It's more than a Presidential Medal of Freedom. 
It's more than his work for the Federal Housing Administration in its 
infancy during the Great Depression, when it played such an important 
part in Americans lives and forged a new path for home finance. His 
legacy is more than the work he did for President Eisenhower's task 
force on housing in 1953 or for President Reagan's task force on 
private housing in 1982.
  Jim Rouse's legacy goes beyond places like Columbia, MD, a town not 
far from this very building where his vision of integrated, 
economically varied community of families took root. His legacy is more 
than the revitalized urban areas in Boston and Baltimore and other 
cities across the country whose citizens owe him such a debt for his 
hard work and vision of the healthy and vibrancy that their 
neighborhoods and communities could regain.
  Jim Rouse's legacy goes beyond even the Enterprise Foundation that he 
created in 1982 with his wife Patty and the goal of seeing that all 
low-income people in this country should have decent housing and an 
opportunity to pull themselves out of poverty.
  Jim Rouse's most important legacy is his belief that we, as a Nation 
and as a national community, cannot and will not abandon cities and the 
families and people who live in them. We must embrace inner-city 
neighborhoods and work to improve their economies and to renew their 
vibrancy. Jim Rouse believed in the importance of cities both as 
centers of commerce and as a fundamental basis of what makes up our 
national identity--our fundamental American character.
  It's a proud and potent legacy.
  More than 10 years ago Jim Rouse said in an interview that ``we need 
to work from the neighborhoods, from the bottom up'' to create the 
necessary systems to deal with low-income families and poverty-stricken 
neighborhoods. He was pursuing just that kind of model when he died. 
His work in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester community tried to address 
all of the needs of a dysfunctional community--housing, education, 
health care, public safety and employment--to create a community based 
strategy.
  Mr. Speaker, this country was very fortunate, not only to have had 
him a part of our national community, but to have had him play such an 
important role in shaping our national character and in defining not 
only who we are, but who we ought to be. I hope that we can continue to 
work in the spirit Jim Rouse inspired.

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