[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 1066-1068]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 REVISING CERTAIN GRANTS FOR CONTINUUM OF CARE ASSISTANCE FOR HOMELESS 
                        INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES

  Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
pass the bill (H.R. 3699) to revise certain grants for continuum of 
care assistance for homeless individual and families.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 3699

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN HOMELESS ASSISTANCE GRANTS.

       Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Notice of 
     Funding Availability for Continuum of Care Homeless 
     Assistance Programs for fiscal year 2001, or any action taken 
     in furtherance of such Notice, the Secretary of Housing and 
     Urban Development shall not award a grant pursuant to such 
     Notice to Liberty Center for the Homeless Incorporated in 
     excess of $459,600. If an award has been made to such Center 
     in excess of such amount before the date of the enactment of 
     this Act, the Secretary shall modify the award and distribute 
     the amounts in excess of $459,600 to other applicants from 
     the Jacksonville, Florida, Continuum of Care in the order 
     listed in the project priority chart contained in their 
     application.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Green) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green).


                             General Leave

  Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 3699.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3699 is a simple technical correction to the 
continuum of care application submitted by the Jacksonville, Florida, 
local government and nonprofit organizations in response to the annual 
application process for homeless assistance funding administered by the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development.
  Because of an error in the submitted application, and the 
interpretation of the HUD Reform Act that would prohibit HUD personnel 
from amending the application to make the corrections, statutory 
language is necessary. This bill will merely change the dollar amount 
to be distributed to the Liberty Center for the Homeless, Incorporated, 
to reflect an annual amount as opposed to a 10-year amount 
inadvertently included in the application.
  Enactment of this bill and the technical correction will allow the 
city of Jacksonville and its nonprofit organizations to receive its 
entire homeless funding under Title IV of the McKinney-Vento Homeless 
Assistance Act.
  While it appears that this is a very minor technical problem, its 
impact has brought significant disruptions to the efforts of very 
worthy nonprofit organizations and the city of Jacksonville to 
coordinate and provide needed services to homeless individuals and 
families.

                              {time}  1530

  I want to thank the Department of Housing and Urban Development for 
their assistance in resolving this issue. More importantly, however, I 
want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw) and the 
gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown) for bringing this issue to the 
attention of the Committee on Financial Services so that we can provide 
a legislative resolution.

[[Page 1067]]

  This bill is noncontroversial and has support from the gentlewoman 
from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema) and the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. Frank), chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Housing 
and Community Opportunity, as well as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Oxley) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce), chairman and 
ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services.
  I urge all Members to support H.R. 3699.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw).
  Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3699. 
As has been stated, it simply corrects an administrative and clerical 
error in a grant application. This legislation corrects a horrible 
wrong that would inadvertently defund numerous projects in 
Jacksonville, Florida. This legislation simply turns back the clock to 
the date that the 11 members of the coalition sat down together and 
submitted a consolidated continuum-of-care application to help 
Jacksonville's homeless outreach projects. It does not authorize any 
additional funding. It only restores the original intent of the 
homeless coalition's continuum-of-care application allowing funding to 
be restored to all existing projects and to begin funding for new 
projects.
  Let me again repeat, this legislation will not cost the taxpayers any 
additional funds; and it will not change the original grant award 
amount. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown) for 
joining me as an original cosponsor of this legislation.
  I urge all of my colleagues to support passage of H.R. 3699.
  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I 
want to apologize for being a little late, but I am pleased to learn 
that some of the colleagues who preceded us were more concise than I 
had anticipated. Perhaps I am being too pessimistic about their 
ability.
  I agree very much with what the gentleman from Florida has just said. 
Let me say as the ranking minority member on the Subcommittee on 
Housing and Community Opportunity that this is an issue that was 
brought to my attention early and persistently and persuasively by the 
gentlewoman from Florida whom the gentleman from Florida has graciously 
mentioned. I know they worked together on this. She pointed out that 
this was a matter, as has been explained, that would cost the 
government nothing; it was simply correcting an error.
  I should say this, Mr. Speaker. As a member of the Subcommittee on 
Housing and Community Opportunity, I hope that the chairman will agree 
that we can take up legislation that would make this sort of bill 
unnecessary, that is, there needs to be a capacity at HUD to correct 
errors of this sort. People make errors. I have had a couple of other 
cases that were brought to me by Members where errors were made. We 
have one that I hope will be coming down the pike. I know the minority 
and majority staffs are working with people from Indiana to try and 
straighten out one from Indianapolis.
  I think a little history is helpful. We had terrible scandals at HUD 
in the early 80s. When a former member of this body, Jack Kemp, became 
the Secretary of HUD under the Presidency of George Bush, we worked 
together, the then Democratic majority in the Congress and Jack Kemp, 
to tighten up the rules so that the kind of abuses that had happened in 
the 80s would not happen again. But we appear to have overtightened. We 
were worried about the abuse of discretion; and we, as sometimes is the 
case, went too far in the other direction.
  So I look forward to working with Secretary Martinez and with the 
majority on the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity so 
that we can restore some common sense, I think we have done a good deal 
of trying to get rid of the corruption, and the legislation of this 
sort would not be necessary.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very glad that this legislation is being passed for 
two reasons: first, because it will give some relief to the people of 
Jacksonville; and, secondly, because I will not now have three 
conversations a day with my good friend from Jacksonville, Florida (Ms. 
Brown), who has been simply indefatigable in working for her 
constituents on this subject.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman 
from Florida (Ms. Brown) since it will no longer be mine.
  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) so much for his leadership and help in this 
matter that greatly affects the people of Jacksonville. I also want to 
thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Crenshaw) for his hard work in 
helping to bring this bill to the floor.
  I cannot begin to explain how important this legislation is to the 
homeless service providers in our hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. 
Unless this legislation is passed and signed into law, two long-time 
agencies will stop serving their clients and terminate 16 jobs.
  On February 28, the Quest program, which provides psychiatric 
medication management to over 200 clients, and Goodwill Industries, 
which last year placed 534 homeless clients in jobs, will end their 
service. There are also eight other major providers that will be forced 
to make the same hard decision. This legislation is the only thing that 
will prevent hundreds of homeless clients from being returned to the 
streets. Let me repeat this. This is the only thing that will stand in 
the way of hundreds of homeless clients being returned to the streets. 
I hope the Senate and the President will quickly get this legislation 
passed and signed into law. These folks have a tough job to do, and we 
need to put them back to work.
  Mr. CRENSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to support 
H.R. 3699, which I introduced to correct a simple clerical error and 
will not cost any additional funding. Without the fix my legislation 
provides, numerous homeless outreach providers in Northeast Florida 
will be subjected to profound and unintended consequences.
  In May 2001, The Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition of 
Jacksonville submitted a consolidated Continuum of Care Application to 
the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requesting a 
maximum grant of $3.5 million. The intent of this application, 
consistent with HUD's responsibilities under the SuperNOFA program, was 
to compete for and obtain funding for a total of 11 Jacksonville 
homeless outreach projects.
  Due to a technical error in the way the grant was submitted, the full 
funding for all 11 projects in Jacksonville was inadvertently granted 
to one agency--Liberty Center. Unfortunately, due to an interpretation 
of the HUD Reform Act, HUD personnel cannot make the needed corrections 
to remedy the technical error--thus requiring this legislative proposal 
before us today.
  As a result, many of the programs listed on the application will 
cease to exist due to a lack of funding. One of these projects, the 
``Quest'' program, operated by the Jacksonville Mental Health Resource 
Center, requested $293,979 and provides psychiatric medication case 
management to approximately 200 clients and case management services to 
several hundred others. There are 5 full-time and 2 part-time employees 
who will be cut. Without this program, these individuals will not have 
continuous case management basis and other public service facilities 
will have to deal with these individuals on a crisis basis. This type 
of problem will ripple through the region and disrupt years of quality 
service to these patients.
  Mr. Speaker, without action today, another program, Goodwill 
Industries, will be forced to close its Job Options program, a $431,707 
renewal in the continuum. Goodwill run out of funding for this project 
on February 28, which will result in termination of 9 employees. This 
is a job training program which puts homeless or near homeless clients 
into paying jobs and off the dole. This past year there were 852 
homeless participants enrolled in the program, of which 534 were placed 
in employment earning an average of $7.95 per hour. It is a very 
effective program and saves substantial government dollars, which would 
otherwise have to be spent in support of these clients, were they 
unable to obtain jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3699 simply corrects an administrative and clerical 
error in a grant application. My legislation corrects a horrible wrong 
that would inadvertently de-fund numerous projects. The legislation 
simply turns back the clock to the date the eleven members of the 
Coalition sat down together and submitted a consolidated Continuum of 
Care Application

[[Page 1068]]

to help Jacksonville's homeless outreach projects. The bill does not 
authorize any additional funding; it only restores the original intent 
of the Homeless Coalitions Continuum of Care Application, allowing 
funding to be restored to all existing projects and to begin funding 
for the new projects. The Liberty Center would keep $459,600 of the 
grant and the remaining funds of just over $3 million would be 
dispersed to the other 10 projects in the priority order they were 
listed on the grant application.
  This legislation will not cost the taxpayers any additional funds, 
and it will not change the original grant award amount of $3,484,778.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, Ms. Brown for 
joining me as an original cosponsor of this legislation and urge all my 
colleagues to support passage of H.R. 3699.
  Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for 
time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Green) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 3699.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds of 
those present have voted in the affirmative.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas 
and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

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