[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 185 (Thursday, October 21, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5784-H5787]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         HOUSING IS CENTER OF ECONOMIC STABILITY AND PROSPERITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Waters) for 30 minutes.


                             General Leave

  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
on my Special Order, and to insert extraneous material thereon.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, last month, the House Financial Services 
Committee Democrats unanimously passed the housing title of the Build 
Back Better Act to provide $327 billion in critical investments needed 
to affordably house America and invest in neighborhoods across the 
country.
  With the inclusion of my committee's housing title, the Build Back 
Better Act will create over 3 million affordable and accessible homes. 
It will fully address the needed repairs in public housing so residents 
can safely live in their homes with dignity.
  It will help an estimated 750,000 households afford their rent or 
exit homelessness through expanded housing choice vouchers. It will 
address the racial wealth gap by helping first-generation home buyers 
access homeownership. These investments will help the schoolteacher 
experiencing homelessness; the children exposed to lead and other 
harmful toxins in their homes; the elderly neighbor who can't afford 
their prescription medications on a fixed income because the rent and 
mortgage is too high; the millennial who cannot rely on the bank of mom 
and dad for a downpayment to purchase their first home; and the 
millions of families that hang in the balance of imminent eviction or 
foreclosure due to the pandemic.
  Just today, my committee heard from several witnesses on the 
importance of the housing choice voucher program and how 
transformational it can be for a family to receive this assistance. 
Harvard Professor Raj Chetty testified about his research showing that 
children whose families received a housing choice voucher to move to 
low-poverty neighborhoods later in life earned 30 percent more than 
children who remained in high-poverty neighborhoods. Another witness 
testified about how the voucher program helps his clients escape 
homelessness and achieve housing stability.

  Housing is at the center of every household's economic stability and 
our Nation's prosperity. Without these investments in resilient, 
healthy, accessible, and fair housing, the Build Back Better Act will 
not improve the lives of families across the country, as we have 
promised it will.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to try, in the best way that I possibly can, 
to describe what is happening in the Congress of the United States of 
America. This build back mission, this act, is the vision of the 
President of the United States of America. President Biden has taken 
the leadership for job creation. He has taken the leadership to deal 
with some of the equity issues in this country. He has taken the 
leadership to do everything that can be done to ensure that we invest 
in the human potential of the citizens of this country.
  He is doing everything that he can to deal with the pandemic, and he 
is unearthing and revealing the softness in our economy, in our 
society, prior to that pandemic, and this is difficult work. This is 
not easy.
  Of course, eventually, we had to deal with the fact that we have some 
who were resisting the mission of the President to build back better.
  At one point in time, I know there was some talk about a $600 
trillion bill. And, of course, we have heard most about a $327 trillion 
bill. So at this point in time, we don't have the cooperation in order 
to realize the President's mission and vision about what it takes in 
order to support the citizens of this country in a way that will help 
to change their lives.
  However, this is transformative. This is the kind of legislation that 
the President of the United States has developed and worked with 
because he

[[Page H5785]]

understands what it takes to strengthen the economy, to create jobs, to 
open up opportunities, to deal with rental assistance, and all of these 
issues.
  Unfortunately, there are two members of the Democratic Party on the 
Senate side who do not agree. It has taken us a long time to understand 
what it is they want, what it is they don't want. But in the final 
analysis, they do not, at this point in time, support the President's 
vision.
  However, those of us who chair committees worked very hard on our 
portion of the Build Back Better Act. I, as the chair of the Financial 
Services Committee, worked very hard with our staff in order to 
identify what is absolutely needed in order to support housing in a 
real way in this country. Housing issues that have been disregarded, 
that have not been paid attention to, housing issues that have gone 
unattended to for so many years, in that, of course, we dealt with 
public housing and the fact that they were in great disrepair, and they 
needed the resources necessary to fix those elevators; in order to get 
the lead out of the paint; in order to make sure that the stairways are 
safe.
  I am reminded of the fact that Ms. Velazquez from New York called me 
from one of the public housing developments last winter when there was 
no heat in the entire development.
  So this money is desperately needed for the capital investments that 
we need to do in public housing. But not only do we deal with public 
housing, we deal with the fact that there are people who work every day 
but cannot afford the rents. We deal with people who are paying 50 
percent of their income for rent. We deal with people who are on the 
ground in makeshift tents every day, homeless all over America.
  One of the issues that has become very important to me is the choice 
voucher issue. So in addition to the $80 billion that we advocated for 
public housing, there is another $90 billion that we advocated for the 
vouchers. This includes not only choice vouchers. It includes project-
based vouchers so that we can develop more affordable units.
  Of course, we recognized what the cities wanted, what they have been 
dealing with, and what they believe will improve their ability to 
assist those who are trying to get safely housed. That is the HOME 
program that the cities love. That is the CDBG program and those 
programs we funded. In addition to that, I want you to know that Barney 
Frank and I worked for years in order to come up with the National 
Housing Trust Fund. So we had $36 billion that we put into that.
  Now, given that we don't know what the top line is in the Build Back 
Better Act, and we don't know exactly whether or not our Senators on 
the opposite side--on the Democratic side or the opposite side--will 
honor this vision and this leadership of the President. So without 
knowing what the top line is, we know that probably we are all going to 
have to take cuts in all the areas that we have worked so hard for.
  I am certainly prepared to accept our share of that responsibility. I 
know that cuts have to be made, but they have to be made fairly. And so 
there was a rumor that there was going to be zero dollars advocated to 
these choice vouchers and project-based vouchers, and, of course, that 
made me very unhappy. That caused me to have great concern. I have been 
working, organizing press conferences, working with the advocates, 
working with academicians and everybody to help the administration and 
everybody else understand that we cannot do without adequate vouchers 
for the people who are in such desperate need of rental assistance.
  Everywhere all over the United States, particularly in Black and 
Brown communities, people have been waiting for years to be able to get 
these vouchers. And so we have a time now by which we are going to be 
funding some of what is needed in housing, and at the top of my list 
are the vouchers.
  I want everybody to know that I have been talking with members of our 
Caucus and I have been talking with members of the Congressional Black 
Caucus. We are not backing away from getting a substantial number of 
vouchers funded. I am not going to back away. I am not going to be shy 
about it.
  As a matter of fact, I will let the world know that I and others that 
I have organized will not vote for any bill that does not have a 
substantial number of vouchers in it so that we can deal with the 
longstanding issues of a lack of decent and safe and secure housing in 
our communities.

  I don't need to say any more. All I need to let people know is, I am 
fair. I accept cuts across many of these areas that I have worked so 
hard for, but I do not want my number one issue in all of this housing 
to be undermined, neglected. And I do not want the people of our 
districts who expect their government to come to their aid when they 
are coming to the aid of others in so many ways--and I respect the fact 
that in our Caucus and in the Progressive Caucus, we have about five 
different kinds of interests that we want to see supported. I, tonight, 
am talking about housing. But I respect the agenda of the Progressive 
Caucus and the five areas that they have identified. But for me, 
housing is number one.
  I will now call on those who are participating this evening.
  I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), who is also my 
friend and chair of the Financial Services Committee's Subcommittee on 
Housing, Community Development and Insurance.
  Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Madam Chair for yielding. Let me 
begin my comments by thanking the gentlewoman, as I have done in front 
of you and away from you, because I think you have placed housing on 
the front burner in this country right now, and it could not have come 
sooner.
  Let me just say that--because I was disoriented because of the 
earlier speakers and then got a really bad headache, but I am going to 
still be able to share these comments--I probably did not grow up like 
many of the people in a contemporary United States. I grew up in Texas 
just outside of downtown Dallas, and I had no idea that we were poor.

                              {time}  1845

  Never mind the fact that we had an outhouse about 30 or 40 yards down 
a hill by a little creek. Never mind the fact that we didn't have 
windows in our house. Actually, we did have windows, but my father or 
somebody had put tin over the windows to keep the winter cold out. The 
good blessing there was, in Texas, the weather is quite mild in the 
winter.
  But I lived in a shack, and there were six people in it. There were 
two rooms. My three sisters slept on one side of the room, and I slept 
on the other side of the room. The kitchen was not really a kitchen. We 
had what was called an icebox, and the iceman would bring a big block 
of ice every 2 or 3 days for 50 cents.
  So I guess somebody could say, well, his parents weren't working and 
that is what happens in this country when people don't work. It may be 
interesting, at least for some, to know that my father attended Prairie 
View, did not graduate from Prairie View, came back home and started 
his own business, Cleaver's Cleaners. And in a town where there was 
rigid segregation, he could only do the people in the neighborhood, and 
that didn't provide enough income.
  But he kept us in this house as comfortably as possible. In fact, one 
night, I asked my mother if I could share something that is called hoe 
cakes, big biscuits. She would make syrup, and I loved it. It was like 
heaven. I asked her if I could share those with the people who lived on 
the big street. We lived in an ally, and there were big mansions that 
are still there today, and I wanted to take some over and give it to 
the rich kids, because my mother said they didn't have any hoe cakes.
  But we lived in a house. And my father, who turned 100 on July 16, 
paid $20 a month on a shack, probably was worth maybe $250. So I grew 
up in that house.
  We then moved to public housing. My father worked--and, in fact, I 
don't know how he made it, and I don't know how he lived to be 100, 
because my father worked three jobs. He worked at the First Baptist 
Church, a huge church, still is a huge church that is known all over 
the country. And then, on Saturday mornings, he cleaned up the T. A. 
Litteken's Construction Company office building. Then on Saturdays, he 
would serve parties. He did that for years and years and years and 
years.

[[Page H5786]]

  I hope he is watching this tonight, because I want to say thank you 
to him, because I don't know how he did all of that. Because my mother 
did not go to school, college, he felt like it was his responsibility 
to send her to college.
  So we moved to public housing. And as I have said publicly, my father 
lied to the officials at the public housing, the Rosewood projects. He 
would not tell them that he had another job, because to do so meant 
that he would have to increase his rent.
  So he saved every dime he could get, every dime, and bought a house 
in the White neighborhood and had it moved on a Saturday night to the 
east side of town where African Americans lived.
  This was his dream. My father had the house fixed up. We moved into 
the house. I had my own bedroom. I thought we were rich. I mean, we 
actually had an indoor bathroom. I remember, I spent one night just 
flushing the toilet, just playing with it. It was like heaven. Then my 
mother started college when I was in the seventh grade. My father 
insisted.
  My father was willing to do whatever he had to do to build his 
family. But the key to all of it was housing. That separated us from a 
lot of others. Housing, it is the most significant thing a human being 
can have. It makes them a part of the American Dream.
  My daddy is somebody--and this rose so high--that his lawn was put on 
display in the local newspaper. The lawn of the summer, that is what he 
wanted to do.
  Madam Chair, I appreciate everything you have done and said to bring 
us to this point.
  I want to say to anybody watching, if you live in the United States, 
the most powerful, the richest Nation on this planet, you have no 
business sleeping outside with 700,000 people who do it every single 
night in this country. You have no business being unable to afford a 
house in the United States, because the average price now is almost 
$400,000.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Torres), my friend.
  Mr. TORRES of New York. Mr. Speaker, I would not be here today as a 
United States Congressman were it not for affordable housing and the 
opportunity it gave me and my family. So the fight is deeply personal, 
and I am honored to stand in the trenches with Chair Waters and Chair 
Cleaver as we fight for affordable housing at a critical moment.
  We cannot build back better without realizing the vision of housing 
as a human right and without realizing the vision of housing as 
infrastructure. We cannot build back better without making America 
affordable to all Americans. Housing is not an afterthought; housing is 
foundational, not only to who we are but to who we become.
  We know from the research of Professor Raj Chetty that ZIP Code is 
often destiny and that where you live determines your access to 
opportunity. It often determines the quality of the schools you attend 
and the services you access.
  We know that housing is not only foundational but also 
intersectional. It intersects with climate. In New York City, we saw 
not one, but two record rainfalls. And as our city has become less and 
less affordable. More and more Americans are living in illegal basement 
apartments that were heavily flooded by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, 
and those Americans died at the intersection of the housing crisis and 
the climate crisis.
  Housing intersects with public health. As our city has become less 
and less affordable, more and more New Yorkers and Americans are living 
in overcrowded apartments. And we saw those overcrowded homes become 
Petri dishes for the spread of COVID-19.
  Housing is essential. Housing stabilizes the essential workforce that 
stabilizes the rest of us. According to the National Low Income Housing 
Coalition, there is not a single county in America where an essential 
worker earning minimum wage could afford a two-bedroom apartment, and 
there are only 7 out of 3,000 counties where an essential worker 
earning minimum wage could afford a one-bedroom apartment. If you are 
an essential worker earning the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, 
you would have to work 72 hours a week in order to afford a one-bedroom 
apartment.

  The central cause of my life has been public housing. My mother 
taught me that the most important lesson in life is to never forget 
where you come from. I come from the Bronx, and I come from public 
housing.
  In New York City, we have the New York City Housing Authority, 
commonly known as NYCHA, which is the largest provider of affordable 
housing in the continent of North America, housing a population of 
about half a million Americans. Half a million is larger than most 
large cities in the United States. If NYCHA were a city unto itself, it 
would be the largest city of low-income Black and Brown Americans in 
the country.
  I feel, Mr. Speaker, that we are on the verge of making history. We 
are on the verge of going from FDR's New Deal to LBJ's Great Society to 
Joe Biden's Build Back Better. But the fundamental difference between 
FDR's New Deal and Joe Biden's Build Back Better is racial equity. 
FDR's New Deal was racially exclusionary, and the Build Back Better Act 
must be racially equitable.
  We cannot build back better without advancing the cause of racial 
equity, but we cannot advance the cause of racial equity without 
rebuilding NYCHA, without rebuilding America's largest city of low-
income Black and Brown Americans. We must rebuild affordable housing.
  Infrastructure is about more than roads and bridges. It is about 
safe, decent, affordable housing. Safe, decent, affordable housing 
represents roads and bridges to the American Dream, and I stand here as 
living proof.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Green), who is also the Chair of the Financial Services Committee's 
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, it is always a preeminent privilege 
to be in the company of Chairwoman Waters, especially when she has 
taken up a cause that is not only worthy but noble. I greatly 
appreciate what she is doing tonight.
  I would say this, housing is infrastructure, and housing is 
infrastructure for a multiplicity of reasons.
  I neglected to say ``and still I rise.''
  And still I rise to talk about housing is infrastructure. Housing is 
infrastructure.
  If we traverse the highways and byways across our country, in our 
urban areas, we will find persons who are sleeping under overpasses, 
sleeping under bridges, sleeping along the roads, the roadways.
  Overpasses and bridges have become housing. The infrastructure itself 
now has become housing. It is my belief that if an overpass can become 
housing, which is infrastructure, then the housing itself can be 
infrastructure. It is time for us to fully fund these housing programs.
  I would mention but one that I think is very important to us, and 
that is the housing choice voucher program. This is an important 
program, because I had my staff to compile some statistical information 
for me, and here is what they have called to my attention. We need to 
know who actually benefits. Over 40 percent of these voucher recipients 
are households with children, 29 percent are the elderly, and 36 
percent are nonelderly people with disabilities.
  This myth that people are, for some reason, deciding that they will 
just make their way through life on the backs of others, is something 
that I call inanity. It is close to insanity to say this when you 
examine the empirical evidence.
  We also find that, yes, the wait time is long, averaging 2.5 years 
nationally. Many of the lines are closed, with the 50 largest housing 
authorities having wait times of a year or more and some up to 8 years.
  Madam Speaker and Madam Chair, there is much more to be said, but the 
time is limited. I would simply say this, vouchers have shown to reduce 
homelessness, help people pay rent, reduce poverty, help children exit 
the welfare system, help persons find and keep employment, help 
children do better in school, help people with disabilities maintain 
their health, help people achieve greater economic mobility, help 
people build wealth, and help families enter the middle class. It is 
time to fully fund the voucher system.

                              {time}  1900

  Ms. WATERS. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Clarke).

[[Page H5787]]

  

  Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the 
American people to express my support for the maintenance of effort of 
the robust housing provisions of the Build Back Better Act that is 
before us as a body.
  I would like to thank the chairwoman of the Financial Services 
Committee, a champion for all of us in the United States of America, 
but particularly for the poor and disenfranchised.
  I rise on behalf of all our American families who are directly 
impacted by our affordable housing crisis, and I rise today, Mr. 
Speaker, because despite the proposed solutions Democrats fought to 
secure in the bill to address our housing crisis head-on, they are at 
risk of being eliminated, negotiated away from the revised package.
  The housing crisis in America is real and growing exponentially each 
and every month. Housing insecurity is very real in the lives of far 
too many American families.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents in central and 
south Brooklyn who continue to struggle due to the lack of affordable 
housing and for whom overdevelopment of market-rate units has created a 
gentrification juggernaut that has swollen the ranks of the homeless in 
New York City and across this Nation, working families stuck who can't 
afford to stay in their apartments but can't afford to leave their 
towns.
  The effects of gentrification and COVID-19 have truly compounded this 
crisis, causing many to be evicted from their homes and experiencing 
homelessness at a rate we have never seen, all due to the lack of real 
and sustained investment in affordable housing.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I believe our time has been exhausted. I 
yield back the balance of my time.

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