[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 7 (Thursday, January 17, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H299-H301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3524, HOPE VI IMPROVEMENT AND 
                      REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007

  Ms. CASTOR. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 922 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 922

       Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule 
     XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of 
     the bill (H.R. 3524) to reauthorize the HOPE VI program for 
     revitalization of severely distressed public housing, and for 
     other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be 
     dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of 
     the bill are waived except those arising under clause 9 or 10 
     of rule XXI. General debate shall be confined to the bill and 
     shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by 
     the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on 
     Financial Services. After general debate the bill shall be 
     considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. It shall 
     be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose 
     of amendment under the five-minute rule the amendment in the 
     nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on 
     Financial Services now printed in the bill. The committee 
     amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered 
     as read. All points of order against the committee amendment 
     in the nature of a substitute are waived except those arising 
     under clause 10 of rule XXI. Notwithstanding clause 11 of 
     rule XVIII, no amendment to the committee amendment in the 
     nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed 
     in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this 
     resolution. Each such amendment may be offered only in the 
     order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member 
     designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall 
     be debatable for the time specified in the report equally 
     divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, 
     shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject 
     to a demand for division of the question in the House or in 
     the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against such 
     amendments are waived except those arising under clause 9 or 
     10 of rule XXI. At the conclusion of consideration of the 
     bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the 
     bill to the House with such amendments as may have been 
     adopted. Any Member may demand a separate vote in the House 
     on any amendment adopted in the Committee of the Whole to the 
     bill or to the committee amendment in the nature of a 
     substitute. The previous question shall be considered as 
     ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage 
     without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with 
     or without instructions.
       Sec. 2.  During consideration in the House of H.R. 3524 
     pursuant to this resolution, notwithstanding the operation of 
     the previous question, the Chair may postpone further 
     consideration of the bill to such time as may be designated 
     by the Speaker.
       Sec. 3.  House Resolution 894 is laid upon the table.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman from Florida is recognized 
for 1 hour.
  Ms. CASTOR. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield 
the customary 30 minutes to my colleague from the Rules Committee, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time yielded is for debate 
only.


                             General Leave

  Ms. CASTOR. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
on House Resolution 922.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. CASTOR. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Madam Speaker, House Resolution 922 provides for consideration of 
H.R. 3524, the HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2007, 
under a structured rule. The rule provides 1 hour of general debate, 
controlled by the Committee on Financial Services, and the rule also 
makes in order seven of the eight amendments submitted to the Rules 
Committee.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support today of the HOPE VI 
Improvement and Reauthorization Act and this rule. HOPE VI is a 
partnership between the Feds and local communities that started in the 
1990s that revitalizes our communities across this country by replacing 
old, distressed public housing projects with modern housing and new 
communities that are healthy, safe and affordable.
  Our renewed effort could not come at a more important time, because 
so many families across America are in the grips of a housing crisis. 
Foreclosures are way up, and options for safe, clean and affordable 
housing are down. Just last month in my home county, Hillsborough 
County, in Florida, there were over 1,000 foreclosures filed, a huge 
jump from last year. And affordable apartments and housing are few and 
far between.
  The House of Representatives over the past months has been doing a 
great deal to throw lifelines to our families, our seniors and veterans 
when it comes to housing. We have passed bills in this House that help 
homeowners avoid foreclosure, that provide resources to local 
communities, to build safe and clean affordable housing, and that 
cracks down on predatory lending.
  Families across America also should be aware that the Congress passed 
a helpful new law that is now in effect for 3 years that relieves 
homeowners

[[Page H300]]

facing foreclosure from paying income taxes on their discharged 
mortgage debt, meaning that homeowners who refinance their mortgage 
will pay no taxes on any debt forgiveness that they receive. 
Previously, loan forgiveness was often taxed as income.
  We are going to keep working to provide families with affordable 
options for safe places to live through the HOPE VI reauthorization and 
this rule today.
  HOPE VI has been very successful since its inception in the 1990s. 
HOPE VI has revitalized neighborhoods across the country, including in 
my hometown of Tampa, Florida. A little public investment can be the 
linchpin to wider community redevelopment in communities across this 
great country.
  HOPE VI completely transformed the distressed public housing 
complexes of College Hill and Ponce de Leon Court public housing 
projects in Tampa into the new Belmont Heights Estates. I attended 
school when I was younger next to these housing projects, and I saw 
firsthand what these conditions can do to an area and the folks who 
live there.
  Behind me are posters of before and after, before HOPE VI, and then 
after the investment of HOPE VI.
  So many public housing projects have deteriorated to the point that 
the health and safety of families is at risk and surrounding businesses 
and neighborhoods suffer. Since 1992, through HOPE VI, many communities 
have revitalized and transformed severely distressed housing into safe 
and livable communities. And 15 years later, this Congress, in a 
bipartisan way, but led by Democrats, will renew our commitment to 
safe, clean and affordable housing for families across this great 
country by building on the success of HOPE VI investment.
  Over time, through HOPE VI, we have demolished nearly 135,000 
severely distressed public housing units and replaced them with modern, 
safe and clean neighborhoods that do not concentrate poverty in a 
single location. What happens on the ground to these neighborhoods? 
Crime rates decrease, employment rates increase, and fewer folks have 
to rely on public financial assistance.
  In Tampa, demolition started in 1999, and 8 years later we have built 
860 rental units. Some are for families who need a little help and 
others are market rate. We built 74 new safe and clean homes for 
seniors and mixed in single family homes, some for rental and some for 
purchase.
  More important than the buildings, however, and these were very bad, 
the new Belmont Heights Estates community made possible by HOPE VI has 
improved people's lives in the surrounding community and private 
investment has followed. Families are thriving in their new revitalized 
neighborhood, and their success stories are remarkable, because, 
remember, to qualify for that helping hand of an affordable home, most 
folks are required to improve their own self-sufficiency, like Belkis 
Rodriguez, who, after completing job training, has been promoted at the 
day care center where she is employed and she is now on the path to 
becoming a public schoolteacher. And Patricia Gowins in Tampa, a mother 
of two, is working on her high school diploma while working at a local 
hotel since her community has been revitalized. My neighbors and their 
stories of success are proof that HOPE VI is able to make positive 
contributions to our communities.
  Our update legislation today will make further improvements and 
ensure that residents who are displaced by revitalization efforts will 
have the right to return to their neighborhoods. Because of the 
shortage across America of clean, safe and affordable housing, it is 
vital that the number of units demolished are replaced so that we do 
not shortchange our neighbors who have been asked to leave their homes.
  We are committed to ensuring that homes built with the help of 
Federal funds are sustainable and energy efficient, and that helps save 
money in the long run. Our efforts today will make the American Dream 
of home ownership possible for more families across this country. And 
thanks to Chairwoman Maxine Waters, Financial Services Committee Chair 
Barney Frank and Congressman Mel Watt of North Carolina, thanks to them 
and their leadership and their dedication to safe, clean, affordable 
housing for our families, we are going to do a great service for 
families across this great country.
  Madam Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support this rule and the 
HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act.
  Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman from 
Florida yielding me the time. I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments, 
specifically as they relate to really the author of HOPE VI, who is 
Jack Kemp, at that time in the early nineties the Secretary of Housing 
in the United States of America.

                              {time}  1030

  I think that today, as we talk about HOPE VI and the wonderful 
attributes that HOPE VI has brought not only to inner cities but to 
thousands of people who live in these new areas as opposed to a large 
housing complex, it is a testament to the dream that, as Secretary, 
Jack Kemp brought to our great Nation.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in reluctant opposition to this restrictive 
rule and to a number of the provisions included in the underlying 
legislation in its current form. This legislation, which alters a 
successful public-private partnership and housing program that 
encourages public housing authorities to work with the private sector 
to create more livable public housing, has a number of avoidable, and I 
repeat, avoidable shortcomings; and I hope that there will be at least 
some of them that will be corrected during this restrictive rule 
process as is provided for by the rule.
  One of the provisions in this bill particularly threatens the 
continued participation of private developers in the program, which 
jeopardizes HOPE VI's continued success. I believe that is part of the 
success, the public-private partnership, in creating mixed-financed and 
mixed-income affordable housing.
  By mandating compliance with privately developed green building 
rating systems, rather than providing market-based incentives to reach 
these goals, this legislation creates additional cost burdens for green 
compliance and adds further impediments to an already complicated 
financing structure which could discourage developers from undertaking 
future projects.
  Further, because the legislation makes specific reference to only one 
green building rating system, this legislation federally mandates 
winners and losers and stifles future innovation and technology 
advancement in all aspects of green buildings.
  I think it would be a flaw to say that the one standard that has been 
developed in 2007 and 2008 would be the only model as we move forward 
in public housing. I certainly would not want that in the free market 
where, as a user of the free market, I would be told one standard that 
was developed this year is what we will use. The future is bright, and 
I wish that our friends on the other side would recognize that there 
will be many, many more technological advances made in the future; and 
mandating one standard today is a flaw in this bill.
  Thankfully, my former Rules Committee colleague and friend from West 
Virginia, the gentlewoman Shelley Moore Capito, has an amendment to 
this legislation that will require minimum green building standards, in 
other words, the floor, not the ceiling, that will make mandatory 
graded sections of HOPE VI application, requiring a minimum standard 
for green building, and allowing for developers who build to a more 
stringent green standard to receive even greater credits. That means 
that we could exceed the one standard. For instance, if you lived in a 
very cold area, or very hot area, you could exceed for maximum 
utilization the opportunity to build the house, up front, properly.
  So our friends on the other side who are telling us the one standard 
is like a one-size-fits-all rather than a minimum standard, however, if 
a determination is made in the section of the country that might 
artificially or might otherwise be able to take advantage of a 
different standard, a different way that might improve economical 
standards of efficiency, it wouldn't be included.
  By utilizing this market-based approach, rather than the one-size-
fits-all

[[Page H301]]

standard of our friends in Washington of a heavy-handed government 
mandate, this amendment achieves the goal of building green without 
stifling innovation for new and improved green building standards.
  I encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, because 
it will take our friends who are Democrats if we are going to pass 
this, to please support this commonsense fix to the legislation.
  Another aspect of this legislation which requires improvement is the 
elimination of HUD's current authority to award demolition-only grants, 
which would prohibit the demolition of unsuitable public housing 
without the replacement of those units. Mr. Speaker, clearly there may 
be instances when demolition-only grants are appropriate; for instance, 
when public housing authorities may have already assembled a financing 
package to fund redevelopment and replacement housing activities, but 
are lacking the funds for the demolition itself.
  Additionally, because of their age and denigration, it is certainly 
possible that some distressed public housing sites would not be viable 
candidates for redevelopment. There are lots of places in this country 
where something was built 15, 20, 30, 40 years ago that might not be 
easily accessible to the modern conveniences of today. And these sites, 
though only partially occupied or completely vacant, because they put a 
demand in a particular area, would be excluded. In these instances, 
other forms of housing assistance such as section 8 vouchers may be 
more appropriate in a community than public housing.
  To address this flaw in the legislation, I have introduced an 
amendment to allow HUD to retain this commonsense authority, rather 
than trying to tie their hands by taking some of the options that had 
previously been available to them off the table.
  For their part, HUD has noted that these grants have provided housing 
authorities with resources to raze, or to tear down, distressed 
developments and relocate impacted families. The result is a cleared 
site that more readily attracts Federal or private resources for the 
revitalization of the property. I encourage all of my colleagues to 
once again support this commonsense amendment to allow HUD to retain 
the flexibility to respond to individual cases, particularly in those 
cases where a public housing authority does not even have a HOPE VI 
renovation grant, leaving it with fewer options in revitalization in 
its most distressed or otherwise not as easily used sites.
  Mr. Speaker, in the last five budget proposals to Congress, this Bush 
administration has advocated the elimination of the HOPE VI program, 
citing the completion of the program's mission and ongoing 
inefficiencies within the programs. These programs have been assessed 
by the administration's objective Program Assessing Rating Tool, what 
is called PART, which has deemed HOPE VI to be not performing, 
inefficient, and more costly than other programs that serve the same 
population. In addition to these fundamental problems, the PART 
assessment notes that ``the program has accomplished its stated mission 
of the demolition of 100,000 severely distressed public housing 
units.''
  I include a copy of this assessment as well as a Statement of 
Administration Policy on this matter for insertion into the Record.

    Program Assessment: HOPE VI--Severely Distressed Public Housing

       The HOPE VI program revitalizes distressed and obsolete 
     public housing, usually replacing it with less dense housing 
     combining a mixture of public and privately owned housing. 
     The program awards grants through a competitive process to 
     State and local public housing agencies for this activity.


                      NOT PERFORMING: Ineffective

       The program is more costly than other programs that serve 
     the same population. It also has an inherently long, drawn-
     out planning and redevelopment process.
       The program has accomplished its stated mission of 
     demolishing 100,000 severely distressed public housing units.
       The program coordinates effectively with related programs 
     in designing a comprehensive program to improve the 
     community.
       We are taking the following actions to improve the 
     performance of the program:
       Implementing changes to complete projects more quickly. The 
     average time to complete a project after award is being 
     reduced from 8 years to 7 years with further improvement 
     anticipated.
       Reducing the average cost per unit of the project. (The 
     average grant award has been reduced from $30 million to $20 
     million to improve project management.)
       Terminating the program since it has completed its mission. 
     The remaining balance of over $2 billion will be spent during 
     the next several years to complete funded projects.
                                  ____


Statement of Administration Policy--H.R. 3524--HOPE VI Improvement and 
                      Reauthorization Act of 2007

       (Rep. Waters (D) CA and 8 cosponsors.)
       The Administration is strongly committed to providing safe, 
     decent, and affordable public housing to those citizens least 
     able to care for themselves and recognizes the contribution 
     made by the HOPE VI program toward the revitalization of 
     public housing. However, because the program has proven over 
     time to be less cost-effective and efficient than other 
     public housing programs, the Administration strongly opposes 
     H.R. 3524, the HOPE VI Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 
     2007.
       HUD has awarded $5.8 billion in HOPE VI revitalization 
     funds to public housing agencies through the end of 2007. 
     While the majority of the funds have been used to promote 
     neighborhood revitalization, $1.3 billion remains unspent. 
     The program's complex planning and redevelopment process has 
     resulted in significant delays in the execution and 
     completion of projects, with the average HOPE VI project 
     taking 7 years to complete. Additionally, some public housing 
     authorities lack the capacity to properly manage their 
     redevelopment projects. The Administration believes that 
     sufficient program funds remain available to allow HUD to 
     properly oversee the completion of existing HOPE VI 
     redevelopment projects but does not believe that additional 
     funds should be authorized or appropriated for this program. 
     Indeed, the last five Administration Budgets have proposed to 
     terminate the program in favor of more efficient and cost-
     effective programs. The Administration's first priority is to 
     place HUD's principal programs, housing approximately 4 
     million low-income households, on sure footing. In fact, the 
     President's FY 2008 Budget proposed approximately $28 billion 
     for that priority.
       The Administration also strongly opposes provisions of H.R. 
     3524 that mandate one-for-one replacement of any public 
     housing unit that is demolished or disposed of under the HOPE 
     VI program. It is not feasible in many communities to provide 
     mixed-use development, including one-for-one replacement of 
     public housing units, on the location of the demolished 
     public housing project. Further, acquisition of additional 
     land in the surrounding neighborhood for use in implementing 
     a one-for-one replacement strategy may not be possible. Even 
     if such land were available, costs to acquire and develop it 
     would be expected to increase the cost of each HOPE VI unit.

  Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to support these 
commonsense amendments that I have spoken about today on the floor 
which we believe will better the bill, in some cases keeping the good 
parts that had been in and other parts allowing flexibility. We believe 
that, in fact, this can be a wonderful bipartisan agreement that we 
could reach today. However, we would ask that all of our colleagues 
support the Neugebauer, Sessions, King, and Capito amendments.
  I also encourage every Member of this body to oppose this rule until 
the Democrat majority provides us with the open rule process that we 
were promised over a year ago. I ask all of my colleagues to vote 
``no'' on the previous question and on the rule.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous 
question and on the rule. I yield back the balance of my time, and I 
move the previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________