[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12850-12851]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    SHELTER HOUSING FOR THE HOMELESS

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, this is a picture of a homeless young 
person; 19,000 of them are in Houston, according to 28 school 
districts. And just think, on the floor of the House before it went 
thud, there was a housing bill that cut the housing appropriation for 
homeless and veterans and working Americans to $44.1 billion. But more 
importantly, under the sequestration amount offered by the Republicans, 
even the Senate, in a compromise manner, put it at $54 billion.
  So I rise today to ask, is anyone speaking for these young people, 
such as those who reside in a place called Lil Audrey in my district, 
where I sat down with young people who had lived in a crack house, not 
because they were on crack, but because that was a place for them to 
live until they found Lil Audrey? Or the young lady that was abused 
until she found Lil Audrey? Or the twins who were homeless with no 
parents until they found Lil Audrey?
  I'm going to ask the city of Houston to use its public facilities 
money, money that it has been blessed to have from the Federal 
Government Housing and Urban Development, to help build a facility for 
Lil Audrey, and I'm going to insist that when local communities get 
Federal dollars that we fight so hard for, to be able to use them 
creatively to serve people, to serve the taxpayer, to serve the 
homeless, to serve homeless youth.
  How long are we going to have to cry out for young people who suffer 
from mental concerns and others who have no place to live? I hope 
Houston will

[[Page 12851]]

listen, and I hope my friends on the other side of the aisle will have 
mercy on those who need housing.

                          ____________________