Preserving a Lifeline: Examining Public Housing in a Pandemic (Hearing, 2021)
Summary
Record of the virtual hearing "Preserving a Lifeline: Examining Public Housing in a Pandemic" before the Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance of the Committee on Financial Services, March 24, 2021, Serial No. 117-13. Chairman Cleaver said that, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the United States has a shortage of roughly 7 million rental homes that are affordable and available to extremely low-income renters. Witnesses were Georgi Banna of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, Oscar Duran of the Municipal Housing Agency of Council Bluffs, Brian Gage of the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority, Michael Hendrix of the Manhattan Institute and Tamir Ali Mohamud of the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council.
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“Preserving a Lifeline: Examining Public Housing in a Pandemic (Hearing, 2021).”
Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/house-hearing-117th-congress-preserving-a-lifeline-examining-public-ho-e2752ceb75/
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[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PRESERVING A LIFELINE: EXAMINING
PUBLIC HOUSING IN A PANDEMIC
=======================================================================
VIRTUAL HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING,
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT,
AND INSURANCE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 24, 2021
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services
Serial No. 117-13
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
44-440 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York PATRICK McHENRY, North Carolina,
NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York Ranking Member
BRAD SHERMAN, California FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York BILL POSEY, Florida
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri
AL GREEN, Texas BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri STEVE STIVERS, Ohio
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado ANN WAGNER, Missouri
JIM A. HIMES, Connecticut ANDY BARR, Kentucky
BILL FOSTER, Illinois ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio FRENCH HILL, Arkansas
JUAN VARGAS, California TOM EMMER, Minnesota
JOSH GOTTHEIMER, New Jersey LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
AL LAWSON, Florida ALEXANDER X. MOONEY, West Virginia
MICHAEL SAN NICOLAS, Guam WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio
CINDY AXNE, Iowa TED BUDD, North Carolina
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois DAVID KUSTOFF, Tennessee
AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts TREY HOLLINGSWORTH, Indiana
RITCHIE TORRES, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts JOHN ROSE, Tennessee
ALMA ADAMS, North Carolina BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin
RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan LANCE GOODEN, Texas
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York VAN TAYLOR, Texas
JESUS ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
NIKEMA WILLIAMS, Georgia
JAKE AUCHINCLOSS, Massachusetts
Charla Ouertatani, Staff Director
Subcommittee on Housing, Community
Development, and Insurance
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri, Chairman
NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York STEVE STIVERS, Ohio, Ranking
BRAD SHERMAN, California Member
JOYCE BEATTY, Ohio LANCE GOODEN, Texas
AL GREEN, Texas BILL POSEY, Florida
VICENTE GONZALEZ, Texas BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
JUAN VARGAS, California TREY HOLLINGSWORTH, Indiana
AL LAWSON, Florida BRYAN STEIL, Wisconsin, Vice
CINDY AXNE, Iowa Ranking Member
RITCHIE TORRES, New York JOHN ROSE, Tennessee
VAN TAYLOR, Texas
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on:
March 24, 2021............................................... 1
Appendix:
March 24, 2021............................................... 31
WITNESSES
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Banna, Georgi, Director of Policy and Program Development, the
National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials
(NAHRO)........................................................ 5
Duran, Oscar, Executive Director, Municipal Housing Agency of
Council Bluffs (MHACB)......................................... 9
Gage, Brian, Executive Director, Akron Metropolitan Housing
Authority (AMHA)............................................... 6
Hendrix, Michael, Director, State and Local Policy, Manhattan
Institute...................................................... 11
Mohamud, Tamir Ali, Commissioner and Vice President, Minneapolis
Highrise Representative Council (MHRC)......................... 8
APPENDIX
Prepared statements:
Banna, Georgi................................................ 32
Duran, Oscar................................................. 39
Gage, Brian.................................................. 43
Hendrix, Michael............................................. 49
Mohamud, Tamir Ali........................................... 61
PRESERVING A LIFELINE: EXAMINING
PUBLIC HOUSING IN A PANDEMIC
----------
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
U.S House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Housing,
Community Development,
and Insurance,
Committee on Financial Services,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:07 p.m.,
via Webex, Hon. Emanuel Cleaver [chairman of the subcommittee]
presiding.
Members present: Representatives Cleaver, Velazquez,
Sherman, Beatty, Green, Gonzalez of Texas, Maloney, Vargas,
Lawson, Axne, Torres; Stivers, Gooden, Posey, Huizenga, Zeldin,
Hollingsworth, Steil, Rose, and Taylor.
Ex officio present: Representative Waters.
Chairman Cleaver. The Subcommittee on Housing, Community
Development, and Insurance will now come to order. Without
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess of the
subcommittee at any time. Also, without objection, members of
the full Financial Services Committee who are not members of
this subcommittee are authorized to participate in today's
hearing.
Now, just as a reminder, I ask all Members to keep
themselves muted when they are not being recognized by the
Chair. The staff has been instructed not to mute Members except
when a Member is not being recognized by the Chair and there is
inadvertent background noise. Members are also reminded that
they may only participate in one remote proceeding at a time.
If you are participating today, please keep your camera on. And
if you choose to attend a different remote proceeding, please
turn your camera off.
Today's hearing is entitled, ``Preserving A Lifeline:
Examining Public Housing in a Pandemic.'' I now recognize
myself for 4 minutes for an opening statement.
In 1937, FDR was still struggling with the issues of the
Depression, and he came up with this idea of having something
to address the housing problems in the country, which was a
critical social need. And what he did was come up with the
Housing Act, which established the Public Housing Program with
the express purpose of providing some kind of financial
assistance to State and local governments for the elimination
of unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions. And it was
supposed to eradicate slums. Well, it didn't quite do that,
because I grew up in public housing quite some time after that,
and they were slums. But it was a great idea, and we still are
having to deal with it.
In the year 2021, it is unfortunate, but a reality
nonetheless, that the national affordable housing challenge
that gave rise to the need for public housing continues to
persist. According to the National Low Income Housing
Coalition, the United States has a shortage of roughly 7
million rental homes that are affordable and available to
extremely low-income renters. Only 37 percent of affordable and
available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income
renter households.
In my community here in Kansas City, in our metropolitan
area that I represent, it is estimated that 84 percent of the
extremely low-income renter households are cost-burdened,
meaning they are spending more than 30 percent of their income
on housing costs and utilities. And if you are vulnerable in
this country in terms of housing, you need shelter to face all
of the challenges that come to all of us, but the housing is
the most needed.
There are an estimated 2.6 million public housing residents
across 1.1 million public housing units in the United States.
Eighty-two percent of public housing residents are extremely or
very low-income, and to ensure affordability, rent for public
housing residents is generally capped at 30 percent of
household income. But if you are poor, that 30 percent can wipe
you out. My dad had to pay almost that much for our housing to
accommodate his four children and my mother. But when you talk
about poverty, that was real poverty.
Public housing is critical infrastructure. And I want to
thank again, publicly, Full Committee Chairwoman Waters, for
her steadfast, strong, unbending support for affordable
housing, and I think that it is long past due when we should
place emphasis on public housing. We also cannot forget, in
this conversation, that public housing communities are often
more than housing. Amid COVID-19, housing authorities have
played an important role in protecting residents, ensuring
social support activities could continue, and securing
opportunities for testing and vaccinations.
So, we want to thank Chairwoman Waters for her work, and I
will now recognize Chairwoman Maxine Waters for an opening
statement.
Chairwoman Waters. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
certainly appreciate this hearing that you are holding today.
Of course, I have been a long-time advocate for public housing,
and I greatly appreciate all of the work that public housing
authorities and their staff have done to keep their residents
safe and connected to their community during this trying time.
I want you to know that while I did not grow up in public
housing, many of my family members did grow up in public
housing. Don't forget, I am one of thirteen children, so I was
gone from the family residence. And after I was gone, for many
of those family members, the only place that was affordable to
them was public housing.
I am from St. Louis, Missouri, and we have some of the
oldest public housing in St. Louis--Carr Square Village--and of
course, I was there when they developed Pruitt-Igoe, and when
they tore it down, and we learned a lot from those lessons. And
so, I am very pleased to be with you today. Housing is
infrastructure, and we are going to make sure that public
housing is covered in our infrastructure bill. Thank you, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
The Chair now recognizes the ranking member of the
subcommittee, Mr. Stivers, for 5 minutes for an opening
statement.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On our first hearing
of the subcommittee for this Congress, I want to congratulate
you on your new leadership role as the Chair of the
subcommittee, and I want to tell you that I look forward to
working with you. We have worked well together in the past, and
I know that we will work well together here. There are a lot of
important issues that we need to address around housing. You
talked about building capacity. I think it is very important.
We are 50,000 units short in my home community here in Franklin
County, Ohio.
Another couple of things I think we ought to talk about
today are giving flexibility to the housing authorities for
their individual communities and what works best for them, and
finally, we need to work to increase the self-sufficiency of
folks who are in public housing. We should be proud to graduate
people out of public housing and give them a leg up and a hand
up to a brighter future.
Today, we are going to hear testimony from several
witnesses who will talk about housing across the country, from
New York to Council Bluffs, to Akron, and Minneapolis, and
every community has different needs and priorities and a
different way of serving their population. And what works for
one public housing authority (PHA) might not work for all PHAs,
especially a large urban core versus a more mid-sized community
or a smaller community. That is why I think it is important
that we give flexibility to housing authorities.
I think your recognition that we have to build capacity
because we are 7 million rental units short in this country is
a great observation. I look forward to working with you on
those issues, Mr. Chairman. And I think we should be proud to
work to build self-sufficiency among the clients of public
housing.
Again, the thing we need to take away from this hearing is
mostly about flexibility. One-size-fits-all proposals do not
work. Instead, public housing authorities should be empowered
to pursue solutions that work for them. It might be a big
public model, or it might be the Rental Assistance
Demonstration (RAD) Project, something that came out under the
Obama Administration, which allows PHAs to convert their
housing units into privately-owned projects, and they can
leverage private-market funding.
Under President Obama and since, this program has generated
$12.6 billion in private investment, and we need to recognize
that. And as we are making infrastructure investments, we need
to allow the private sector to invest alongside us.
My colleagues on both sides of the aisle should also
consider the barriers that tenants face. Currently, rent
contributions are linked to income, which results in a benefit
cliff that creates a big problem for building self-sufficiency,
and I think we should be talking about that. It is especially
important as we talk about the recovery that is about to happen
out of the pandemic. We are seeing, ``Help Wanted'' signs
everywhere, and I think it is time we do away with the benefit
cliff and turn it into a ramp. Let us let people ramp up to a
better way of life and real opportunity and build self-
sufficiency.
And I think rental assistance is a great way to start
talking about ending the benefit cliff that traps so many
people and doesn't let them build self-sufficiency. It is a
well-intended concept, but it is time we fix it and make it a
ramp and give people incentive and help them as they are trying
to move up their station in life.
Additionally, by paying rent month after month, individuals
get no closer to homeownership, and this committee has agreed
time and time again that homeownership is an important part of
wealth building. I look forward to working with the chairman.
He and I have had conversations about this already. I have
talked to Secretary Fudge about this. We have to figure out how
to create some things like maybe the option of a right-to-buy
that they have in the United Kingdom for people who pay months
and months of rent. And that would really give us an
opportunity to move toward self-sufficiency and building wealth
and the American Dream of homeownership for millions of
Americans who may never see it today.
And I think that is something that I look forward to
working with you on, Mr. Chairman, because these issues are not
partisan. It is about solutions and doing what is right for the
American people. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses
today, and I just want to, again, as I wrap up my last 15
seconds, say that the thing that we need to keep in mind is
that flexibility is the right answer. There is no one right-
sized solution. It is not maybe all the RAD program, but it
might also not only be big public housing. So, I hope we pursue
flexibility today. I yield back.
Chairman Cleaver. I look forward to working with you,
Ranking Member Stivers.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you.
Chairman Cleaver. Today, we welcome the testimony of our
distinguished witnesses: Georgi Banna, who is the director of
policy and program development at the National Association of
Housing and Redevelopment Officials; Brian Gage, who is the
executive director of the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority;
Tamir Ali Mohamud, who is a commissioner and vice president of
the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council; Oscar Duran,
who is the executive director of the Municipal Housing Agency
of Council Bluffs; and Michael Hendrix, who is the director of
State and local policy at the Manhattan Institute.
Witnesses are reminded that their oral testimony will be
limited to 5 minutes. You should be able to see a timer on your
screen that will indicate how much time you have left, and a
chime will go off at the end of your time. I would ask that you
be mindful of the timer, and quickly wrap up your testimony if
you hear the chime, so that we can be respectful of both the
witnesses' and the committee members' time. And without
objection, your written statements will be made a part of the
record.
Mr. Banna, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to give an
oral presentation of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF GEORGI BANNA, DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROGRAM
DEVELOPMENT, THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOUSING AND
REDEVELOPMENT OFFICIALS (NAHRO)
Mr. Banna. Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Stivers, and
members of the Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development,
and Insurance, thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you this afternoon. My name is Georgi Banna, and I am director
of policy and program development for the National Association
of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO). NAHRO, which
was established in 1933, is a member organization of 20,000
housing and community development providers and professionals
throughout the country. NAHRO members administer more than 3
million homes for more than 8 million people.
COVID-19 has stretched resources for public housing
authorities and their co-residents to the maximum. The pandemic
has only intensified an already-staggering need for stable,
healthy, and affordable housing. Public housing meets these
needs and is the only public affordable housing in our country.
Public housing must be protected and public housing must be
expanded. But like much of America's infrastructure, public
housing needs significant investments to modernize and repair
it.
NAHRO estimates the backlog of needed repairs through our
public housing stock is upwards of $70 billion. The pandemic
has demonstrated the critical role that public housing plays in
communities across the country. PHAs have used public housing
to distribute food, healthcare, and other necessities of daily
life to their most vulnerable community members.
I would like to highlight three areas where PHAs have used
public housing as a community hub. First, in the 21st Century,
internet access is as much a basic utility as electricity and
water. When schools transitioned to remote learning in Alabama
last spring, the Opelika Housing Authority saw an immediate
need for expanded internet service. Agency leadership bridged
the digital divide by providing internet service access at no
cost to residents. They built the new service into their
operational budget.
Recently, some flexibility has been provided by HUD to use
operating funds to provide internet services to residents of
public housing units. Additional flexibilities such as allowing
utility allowances to include internet costs, along with
additional resources, are needed.
Second, low-income families across the country confront
food insecurity and food deserts daily. Many PHAs look to help
families access the food they need by partnering with local
nonprofits and local governments to bring food pantries to
families and seniors who need it most. The Tampa Housing
Authority in Florida opened Meacham Urban Farm this past
February. The garden spans nearly 2 acres and is expected to
yield 30 dozen eggs per week and 60,000 pounds of produce per
year. Residents of public housing in downtown Tampa now have
greater access to fresh produce. PHAs need additional
flexibilities and resources to expand access for residents.
Third, PHAs are supporting the health and well-being of the
people they house during the pandemic. This month, the
Worcester Housing Authority in Massachusetts organized public
health clinics to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine. Nearly 120
Belmont Tower residents received their first dose. Housing
authority staff reached out to residents directly to answer
their questions and to escort elderly residents to the clinic.
Housing Alliance and Community Partnerships, the reinvented
Housing Authority of the City of Pocatello, Idaho, is led by
NAHRO's President Sunny Shaw and a very dedicated team. Just
like other PHAs, they continued to serve residents in their
community throughout the pandemic, never shutting down
operations. However, at one point in October, 14 of their 15
staff members contracted COVID-19. While taking care of
themselves, they continued to virtually check in with residents
and maintain essential operations.
In order to serve the residents and communities throughout
the ongoing pandemic, PHAs need continued support and resources
from HUD and Congress to protect public housing and expand its
role as a community asset. In addition to needing more than $70
billion in current public housing capital needs, new units must
be built. Since 1999, almost 300,000 permanently affordable
units were removed from the inventory of public housing units.
Congress must show support for new affordable housing
construction and fund the construction of at least 300,000 new,
permanently affordable units.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES)
Act allowed HUD to make broad and sweeping statutory regulatory
waivers. PHAs are using these waivers to serve residents and
their communities with speed and efficiency. These agencies,
particularly smaller agencies, will need continued flexibility
to focus on outcomes. Reimagined inspection protocols, document
requirements for tenants, and reporting needs will help
agencies in the future just as they are helping them now during
the pandemic.
This is a watershed moment. It is time for bold, actionable
resourced ideas, ideas that, when actualized, will stem the
long-term impact of our current public health crisis. It will
require the political fortitude of the Federal Government and
the innovations of localities. I look forward to your
questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Banna can be found on page
32 of the appendix.]
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Banna.
Mr. Gage, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to give an
oral presentation of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN GAGE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AKRON METROPOLITAN
HOUSING AUTHORITY (AMHA)
Mr. Gage. Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Stivers, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you, as well
as Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry, for the
invitation to testify.
The Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority (AMHA) is a public
housing authority accredited by the Affordable Housing
Accreditation Board and recognized by the Department of Housing
and Urban Development as a high performer for our stewardship
of the Federal public housing and voucher programs in Summit
County, Ohio. In March of 2020, our nation faced a public
health emergency, and AMHA called upon our essential frontline
employees to protect and serve the families living in our
communities. We transitioned swiftly into a contactless, remote
work environment with flexible schedules to ensure the safely
of staff and residents. As health professionals focused on
addressing the virus, AMHA and housing authorities across the
country focused on meeting the immediate needs of residents in
our developments.
Unlike many property owners, public housing agencies are
required to provide much more than just housing to a much
different population. Most of the public housing population is
older and many have a disability, or are suffering from
underlying health conditions, and are therefore particularly
vulnerable to the coronavirus. The charge of the public housing
program is to not only provide safe and healthy homes for our
families to live in, but also to coordinate the provision of
other basic needs including the delivery of food, medical care,
transportation, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Our
families regularly call upon us to assist with their financial
and mental health. Immediately after the onset of the national
health emergency, AMHA was able to secure and distribute 4,800
PPE bags and 70,000 meals to residents facing transportation
challenges who did not want to risk their exposure on mass
transit.
Many senior citizens and families with disabilities found
themselves without digital access, as many healthcare visits
went virtual. Families with children needed connectivity to
facilitate remote schooling options. We responded quickly by
providing hotspots for families with students and providing
earbuds and headsets to help them concentrate. We are now in
search of resources to provide wireless access in all of our
units.
Partnering with Summit County Public Health, we provided
six sites in the last month for testing and vaccination of
individuals, including public housing senior citizens and
individuals with disabilities. AMHA fostered and perpetuated
relationships such as this one through decades of work and
collaboration within the community. These partnerships are what
makes public housing more than just housing.
The funding that public housing agencies received under the
CARES Act facilitated this level of response. On behalf of the
residents of AMHA, the board of trustees, and myself, I want to
express gratitude to the Members of Congress for providing
these resources to respond to the pandemic.
As we turn the page from response to recovery, there is a
significant workload that will take months to address, while
other greater capital needs will take years. While focusing on
sanitization and emergency work orders, we accrued a backlog of
routine maintenance items that we now must quickly address.
This will result in a higher cost of operations as we progress
through recovery, but it also provides an opportunity for
housing agencies to expand our role as job creators.
Unfortunately, the current funding formula calculation for
public housing funds for the upcoming years does not
contemplate this additional work and the opportunity to get our
communities back to work.
Some level of emergency funding similar to that provided
under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)
will be helpful for PHAs to address immediate emergency needs
around the country prior to any larger housing infrastructure
investment. Under ARRA, PHA used funds on projects that
bolstered economic growth, created jobs, improved the quality
of life for residents, and increased energy efficiency. In the
time of recovery, it becomes important to take advantage of
what our agencies do well. When considering legislation for
infrastructure and recovery, Congress should leverage and
utilize public housing agencies' decades of experience in
creating jobs, caring for the most vulnerable in our
communities, and operating public housing voucher programs.
Since the start of the pandemic, operational changes that
PHAs have implemented have demonstrated alternative but
effective means of managing programs, some of which were
previously not permissible, but are permitted by the CARES Act.
Many of these waivers should be extended or made permanent
instead of returning back to the ways of old without
considering our lessons learned.
I want to thank the chairman, the ranking member, and the
subcommittee. I am available for follow-up questions and to
provide guidance to the subcommittee and HUD on the best
practices and the many ways that Congress and HUD can help
residents and PHAs across the country to not only get through
this pandemic, but to thrive long after it has passed.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gage can be found on page 43
of the appendix.]
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Gage, for your testimony.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Mohamud for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF TAMIR ALI MOHAMUD, COMMISSIONER AND VICE-
PRESIDENT, MINNEAPOLIS HIGHRISE REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL (MHRC)
Mr. Mohamud. Thank you, Chairman Cleaver, for the
opportunity to testify today. My name is Tamir Mohamud, and I
serve as the vice president of the Minneapolis Highrise
Representative Council, the City-wide public housing highrise
tenancy organization which represents the interests of over
5,000 residents in 42 Minneapolis Public Housing Authority
(MPHA) highrises. I am also a resident commissioner on MPHA's
Board of Commissioners, the president of my resident council,
and I serve on the Minneapolis Highrise Health Alliance.
I was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. I worked as a high school
history teacher. In 1990, the Somali government collapsed, and
when the civil war erupted, it was a sad moment for all Somali
people to see such tragedy where all institutions failed to
function. I fled my homeland and was forced to live as a
refugee in neighboring Kenya. There, I worked for the United
Nations High Commission, providing English/Somali translation.
Life in the resettlement camp was difficult. People lived in
tents. It was crowded, lonely, and cut off from the outside
world.
In 2001, I moved to Minneapolis. I came to the United
States to be close to family, for job opportunities, and to
live the American Dream. The United States has a long tradition
of welcoming people from all backgrounds and cultures and is a
great place for people who must look to live outside of their
home country. I lived with my daughter and her husband until I
moved into the public housing highrise at 1515 Park Avenue
South. I moved into public housing in order to have my own
place and independence. Moving into my highrise meant becoming
neighbors with a widely diverse community of people and it was
the start of the opportunity to become more involved in my
community. It presented me the opportunity to become a resident
leader, all because MPHA provided me with a safe and stable
home so that I could then focus on helping my community.
My involvement in public housing has given me the
opportunity to meet and work with many people from different
backgrounds. In my own building, I have gotten to know many of
my East Indian neighbors by working side by side in the
community vegetable garden at our highrise.
Public housing is a valuable resource to the City of
Minneapolis, as it means safe and affordable housing for the
members of our community who have the greatest need.
Homelessness has grown in Minneapolis. We see tent cities
springing up all around us and there are not enough shelter
beds to meet the need. Public housing is one answer to the
housing shortage.
Public housing has also been a lifeline for my neighbors
and me during COVID. MPHA provided food, hygiene products, and
masks to residents when the pandemic hit. MPHA organized
psychological testing throughout the pandemic and offered on-
site flu shots in the fall. This month, MPHA and the City
Health Department began vaccinations in highrises, and today,
nearly all of the first round of COVID vaccination clinics have
been completed at all 42 highrises at MPHA.
It is critical that public housing is preserved and
increased. We depend on Congress to provide enough funding to
preserve and expand public housing. It has failed in this role
for too long. MPHA continues to seek production in the amount
we will save or the funding we need to do improvements to our
public housing units. Public housing has been central to my
success in America. I hope you will preserve it for others in
the future. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I am
happy to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mohamud can be found on page
61 of the appendix.]
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Mohamud for your
testimony.
Mr. Duran, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF OSCAR DURAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MUNICIPAL HOUSING
AGENCY OF COUNCIL BLUFFS (MHACB)
Mr. Duran. Thank you, sir. My name is Oscar Duran, and I
would like to first thank the subcommittee for this opportunity
to testify today about the importance of our public housing
program, and our nation's commitment to families who need this
essential program.
In my short tenure serving at a public housing authority, I
have heard many opinions regarding the challenges and even
modern relevance of administering a public housing program. And
although I can say I have less than one year of service to my
local PHA, I can confirm that the challenges are indeed real.
Operating a public housing program is very tough. But then
again, I would ask everyone to challenge themselves and to find
and name a legal housing program or any social program out
there that exists without operational challenges.
I began my journey here in public service when I was 24-
years-old, when I was just a neighborhood advocate who wanted
to make my neighborhood better. I spent countless hours with
neighbors processing applications, loan applications, working
with them to look at their credit scores, and advocating about
how to just keep motivating to push forward to have a better
living condition for their family. Little did I know that 15
years in the future, I would one day get that privilege, to be
able to serve in this role and continue to help families with
housing.
So, how does this relate to the relevance of public housing
today? The answer is very simple to me. There is a common
practice in private development of utilizing credit scores as a
universal qualification for people who just want a decent home
for themselves and their families.
As a housing advocate, I regularly appreciate the design
and accessibility of the public housing program, because as
PHAs, we don't need to use credit scores to determine a human
being's access to housing. And then, when you pair that with
the rapidly growing under-supply of affordable housing across
our country, and then the overreliance on the public market to
ease our national housing needs, in my opinion, the public
housing program continually demonstrates its vitality and place
in our nation. It remains the single constant program available
in many communities across our nation, which will house people
regardless of their FICO score.
For this primary reason, I would recommend and advocate to
the Members of Congress and this great subcommittee to please
continue to fight tirelessly to preserve this essential program
and provide additional funds so we can continue to support our
neighbors in need.
In our PHA in Council Bluffs, Iowa, we have 295 affordable
homes that we offer to our community. Now, that might not seem
like a lot, but it has an impact on our community. Split
between two public housing communities, these homes continue to
demonstrate their worth and impact by housing over 300
neighbors in our area, many of whom who are disabled, elderly,
and near homelessness. And as such, maintaining these
properties to the high standards that we would be proud to live
in ourselves is of the utmost importance to us. Our capital
improvement plan spans over 5 years into the future, and lists
a ton of different strategic lists of repairs needed to
maintain these facilities to serve our residents and the larger
community.
Now, like most PHAs, as you are going to hear today,
operating these communities through the pandemic unearthed a
variety of additional large-scale improvements needed to
improve the lives of our residents. Just to name a few, we need
additional personnel resources to aid residents in
communicating to the outside world and obtaining additional
supplies. We need an overhaul of our digital communication
tools and standards and more features for added health and
safety measures in our facilities. Any infusion of significant
capital funding would allow our agency and other PHAs in our
country to begin to properly address these findings that relate
to the pandemic and continue to prepare our facilities and our
neighbors, our residents to maintain a higher quality of life
standards during this pandemic, any future pandemic or any
other social crises in the near future.
In pondering different ways our nation's leadership could
continue to support PHAs, one policy that quickly comes to mind
is another round of CARES waivers and public housing funds. We
have already kind of alluded to that. And specifically on the
waivers, in my mind, our PHA prides itself in continually
receiving a, ``high performer'' designation, which directly
attributes to our subsidy and capital funds allocations.
Now, compare that with the fact that HUD has a lot of new,
very aggressive, and very great programming, new changes,
specifically new National Standards for the Physical Inspection
of Real Estate (NSPIRE) inspection standards, new Section 3
requirements, and new, overhauled capital funds program
administrative standards, all of this is wonderful, but I feel
that if we can have an additional waiver to maintain our pre-
COVID, Section 8 Management Assessment Program (SEMAP) and
Physical Assessment Subsystem (PASS) scores, it will really
help us, and it will be beneficial to be able to still go
through the new inspection standards, adapt to the changes
needed, and give us time to fix it without having to have those
financial resources to serve our families.
Thank you. I am excited to present today, and I welcome any
questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Duran can be found on page
39 of the appendix.]
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Duran. I have appreciated
very much your comments.
Mr. Hendrix, you are now recognized for 5 minutes to give
an oral presentation of your testimony.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL HENDRIX, DIRECTOR, STATE AND LCOAL POLICY,
MANHATTAN INSTITUTE
Mr. Hendrix. Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Stivers, and
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
participate in today's hearing. My name is Michael Hendrix, and
I am the director of state and local policy here at the
Manhattan Institute. Along with my colleagues, we seek to
advance freedom and opportunity in America's communities.
The pandemic showed us the reality, the failed reality of
public housing in America and the need for a better deal for
Americans in need of a safe place to call home. Nowhere is this
clearer than with the New York City Housing Authority, or
NYCHA, the nation's oldest and largest public housing system,
long held up as the greatest example of what government-led
housing can achieve.
Through the example of NYCHA, we must see how poorly-run
local housing authorities are: first, failing to care for the
well-being of their tenants; second, actively harming the
health and safety of those under their roofs; and third, too
often doing little to integrate residents into the broader
economy of their community. These are not failures of funding
alone, but inescapable flaws of public housing itself, which
robs Americans of safe and equitable choices in shelter.
NYCHA's example should be a warning to local housing
authorities across the country. Whether the fault of Washington
and its appropriators, the reality of public housing across
America is that it is a social engineer's dream often turned
into a nightmare for actual residents. We know that public
housing routinely fails to provide for and protect the well-
being of its residents.
In 2020, New York City's public advocate ranked NYCHA as
the City's worst landlord, public or private, for the third
year in a row. The rest of the country's public housing also
consistently fails to provide for the well-being of low-income
residents. No one can look at the public housing we actually
have and say it is the housing we want. And more of the same
failed ideas are unlikely to truly help those in need.
This reality became clear in light of the failures of
public housing during the pandemic of COVID-19, as well as
ongoing struggles with lead, asbestos, toxic mold, and crime,
among a host of other troubling woes. One of the deadliest
places to be in New York City, in fact, during the pandemic,
was in a New York City Housing Authority apartment. For far too
many residents during the pandemic, public housing was less of
a lifeline, and too often, more of a death sentence.
This is not to question the intent of public housing
authorities, but rather their reality and their results. Worse
yet, public housing's legacy of segregation persists to this
day, preventing residents from building equity or integrating
into the broader community or economy. Far too much of today's
public housing still bears the legacy of having trapped
generations in poverty. The truth is that the typical household
in public housing will come in poor and leave poor.
Rather than trapping Americans in unhealthy, unsafe, and
often segregated public housing, we should offer those in need
an equitable and available choice in housing. Rather than
losing out by moving out, housing supports should follow those
in need and in search of opportunity. And we should question
whether public housing is the right tool for answering calls
for shelter injustice in this country today.
The implicit subsidy provided to public housing's residents
would likely be better used explicitly in their pockets,
leaving them free to move into neighborhoods of real
opportunity by their own choice, and with local housing
agencies existing as resources rather than simply as landlords
of last resort. While there is no guarantee that directly
helping people afford decent housing will improve their lives
overnight, we would surely be doing far better than doubling
down on America's failed experiment in social housing. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hendrix can be found on page
49 of the appendix.]
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you very much, Mr. Hendrix, for
your comments.
We will now begin our questioning, and I will recognize
myself for 5 minutes.
I have been accused, throughout my political career, of
being ``Pollyanna-ish,'' so I want to put that aside just a
little in terms of asking the panel a question. I have been
around for a while. Mr. Green and I were among the Members,
along with Chairwoman Waters, who went down into New Orleans
immediately after the terrible flood of Hurricane Katrina. And
we saw what had been done in that project, and then looked at
what needed to be done.
I think about this, and not only as I look at and recall
Katrina, but back when we did the ARRA funding, it was just
under a trillion dollars. It should have been more. That is
another whole meeting that we can discuss. But we did something
that had not been done in years, in decades, which is that we
recognized that affordable housing was a valuable part of our
national housing infrastructure and put into that affordable
housing project $4 billion to address the capital needs of
public housing.
And if you look at what happened, I understand those funds
generated an additional $12.5 billion in economic activity. So,
here is what I am saying. Even if you don't like public
housing, even if you don't like the government putting money
into trying to help poor folks live in public housing, a $12.5
billion injection into the U.S. economy as a result of working
on eliminating the blight of public housing that, in and of
itself, I think, would demand that any future infrastructure
program should have something in there similar or superior to
what we did way back in 2009.
How many of you on the panel agree?
Mr. Gage. Mr. Chairman, thank you for asking the question.
I do agree. In Akron, we have $300 million worth of backlog in
multiple projects. We can get people to work and repairing our
inventory right away.
Chairman Cleaver. Anyone else?
Mr. Banna. I would agree as well, with the opportunity for
the rehabilitation of the current public housing stock and also
the opportunity to build new units. In many places, there are
shovel-ready projects that are ready to go once the funding is
available, which will help the community, and the economic
stability of those communities.
Mr. Duran. I would also concur. In Council Bluffs, Iowa, we
had, pre-pandemic, 15 percent of our families at or below the
poverty line, and 30 percent by and lower. The sheer 295 units
we can offer is just not enough. We are doing, I feel, an
exceptional job maintaining them, but we need to do something
more. Meanwhile, the market is just responding to units that
are only accessible [inaudible] by enough. So we absolutely
would [inaudible].
Chairman Cleaver. Anyone else? Well, thanks for your
responses. Now, you have mentioned--I think it was you, Mr.
Duran, who mentioned we had a backlog and we need to build new
units. Up until today, we did build new units in New Orleans--I
can't remember the name of that housing project. Mr. Green is
about 30 years younger than me, so he will recall the name of
the project that we looked at, and the time that we spent with
twin sisters who had lived in the units together.
But my question is, so far, all we have done, as you all
know quite well, is one-for-one replacement. That is what we
have been doing for decades, and I am wondering, and some of
this is political, but some of this would be also in our local
communities, how do we go beyond the one-to-one replacement?
That is going to be a tough deal, particularly in local
communities where they don't want any additional public
housing.
Mr. Duran. Fantastic question. One of the partnerships we
are doing right now in our small community is with a group
called--it is a local shelter. And we are talking about how we
can get just four small units, four units that will be in an
area, a part of town that we are not, and how can we help the
poor, single parents who want to be housed in this type of
public housing to truly transcend poverty.
Now, what that means is it is going to be small pieces,
units at a time, but what we need to also begin to show is that
these little differences can begin to build a new model for the
future of how to grow more affordable housing units in our
community.
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Duran.
Ranking Member Stivers, you are now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really look forward
to working with you on a lot of these initiatives, and I
appreciate your questions.
The first question I have is for the folks who work in
housing authorities, Mr. Gage, Mr. Duran, and Mr. Mohamud. The
first thing I talked about is more flexibility. Several of you
mentioned more flexibility. Do all of you agree that more
flexibility for housing authorities would be a good thing,
given that of our 3,300 housing authorities across the United
States, they are all unique?
Mr. Gage. Ranking Member Stivers, yes, I do agree with you
that flexibility is important especially when trying to address
local issues. Each City, from Kansas City to Columbus to
Kenosha, has their own different issues that they have to deal
with. Here in Akron, we have a different market than you have
down in Columbus, so we have our own challenges here, and we
would like to be able to customize our programs and have the
flexibility to promote efficiency and effectiveness in serving
our community.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you.
Mr. Duran, Mr. Mohamud, do you agree with that?
Mr. Duran. I absolutely do, as well. The larger percentage
of our families who utilize our public housing program,
compared to our Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, are on
really fixed incomes, a lot of elderly people, and disabled
families, who actually wouldn't be able to utilize the housing
choice voucher program because they have mobility issues.
Really, we are the single point, aside from homelessness, which
can house those families who wish to stay in their local
communities. So, more flexibility for us to not be grouped in
with different areas, because Omaha is our sister City right
next door, with a very large PHA. We are also referred to as a
PHA, a large one, but we don't have 18 towers; we have 2
towers. So, I agree that more flexibility would be tremendously
helpful.
Mr. Stivers. Mr. Mohamud, do you agree with that as well?
Mr. Mohamud. Yes, I agree.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you. That is helpful.
And I think each of you addressed it in your own way, but
building self-sufficiency, is that something you aspire to in
your housing authorities, and what are you doing to actually
help with self-sufficiency and building self-sufficiency over
time? What do you think of the idea like they have in the
United Kingdom of allowing somebody who has paid rent for years
and years and years to potentially gain some equity through the
ability to start to live the American Dream and have
homeownership? What do you think about those ideas? And in any
order address--
Mr. Gage. Thank you. I will go first and then defer to my
colleagues. We are very big supporters in Akron of the Family
Self-sufficiency Program. Last year, we graduated 17 families,
giving out over $150,000 in escrow. We also are the recipients
of a Jobs Plus grant that is helping one of our communities get
people to employment, and make them more self-sufficient.
The Expansion Act of a few years ago was a small move to
expand family self-sufficiency. I think that could be greater,
and expanded a little bit more, as well as the Resident
Opportunities and Self-Sufficiency (ROSS) program and other
programs that promote self-sufficiency.
Mr. Stivers. That is a great answer. Thanks, Mr. Gage.
To Mr. Duran and Mr. Mohamud, let me redirect you a little
bit to something that Mr. Gage didn't mention. Do you have an
issue with the benefits cliff where, as you are trying to build
self-sufficiency, they can't build enough self-sufficiency
before they lose their housing assistance because of the
benefits cliff? Either Mr. Mohamud or Mr. Duran?
Mr. Duran. Absolutely. The benefits cliff is extremely
real. It is a delicate situation and conversation because I
believe in family self-sufficiency and everybody's right to
pursue homeownership. If that is what they want, then that is
what they should achieve. But the reality is there are
families, and I can think of 40 really quickly in my head, for
whom that is just not where they want to go. They want to be
able to age out and pass in peace in a safe, quality home in
something like public housing.
I think to make it a more holistic argument--
Mr. Stivers. That gets back to flexibility, but today, too
many folks in public housing have no option and no path to
homeownership. That is the real problem right now, isn't it?
Mr. Duran. Absolutely. It is a huge part of the problem and
one that we are proactively tackling. Prior to arriving at MHA,
we solidified a partnership with the Omaha Partnership
Authority and Habitat for Humanity of Omaha to transition 100
of their scattered site homes to first preference home-
ownership opportunities for families on the other side of the
river. And I fully intend to build a similar program--
Mr. Stivers. Thanks for that. That is great. That is a
great program and helps generate great wealth for those
families and helps them live the American Dream. I yield back.
And let us do a second round, if it works.
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Stivers.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Green of Texas.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I do recall our
visit to New Orleans with Chairwoman Waters, and my
recollection is that it was the Desire Project, but there were
several projects that we did and it may not have been Desire.
So, that is my recollection. And while I appreciate you being
kind about the age--
[laughter]
Mr. Chairman, this hearing is absolutely necessary and some
of the evidence that we are receiving is overwhelming. The fact
that seniors and people with disabilities, families with
approximately 597,000 children comprise more than 37 percent of
public housing households. That is a pretty significant number.
And when I look at some of the other numbers--a $70 billion
backlog needed for capital repairs, and more than 10,000 public
housing units lost each year because of disrepair--it is
obvious that this hearing is one that we absolutely should take
to heart.
And I remember the first time I heard the term, ``one-for-
one replacement,'' was when we were with Chairwoman Waters and
she was--this was shortly after Hurricane Katrina. We were in
New Orleans, and she was insisting on one-for-one replacement.
And she has been consistently insisting upon one-for-one
replacement. With losing 10,000 units per year, in great
disrepair, and a $70 billion backlog needed to take care of
these capital improvements, my point and my question is going
to be a very simple one.
The units are disappearing, but my belief is that the need
is not disappearing. In fact, it seems to be increasing. Having
been to Skid Row, having just looked at the evidence in my own
city of people living under bridges, people getting tents and
camping out downtown, people making some sort of lean-to so
that they can have some degree of shelter, I am just very much
concerned about what the solution is going to be ultimately to
the units that are being lost.
We talked about one-for-one replacement, but because of the
lack of funding, that is not taking place, and notwithstanding
the Faircloth Amendment, we still have a lack of funding to
deal with. So with this said, let me just ask one of our
persons who is an expert, Mr. Hendrix, what do we do given that
the need is being enhanced and the units are being lost?
Mr. Hendrix. Thank you, Congressman. That is a terrific
question, and it is absolutely true that throughout this
country, we need more housing, more housing of all types for
people of all backgrounds and all needs. I think my only
question is, should we have a one-size-fits-all approach of
just public housing, or should we give local public housing
authorities the flexibility they need to offer a variety of
housing solutions for people. And should we be working with
localities and municipalities to make it more flexible for more
private sector, even naturally-affordable housing solutions to
be offered, because the same barriers that exist to private
market-rate housing being built, unfortunately also exist for
public housing to be built.
Mr. Green. Let me just share this with you, and I don't
mean to be rude. But it looks to me like building these
complexes, regardless of flexibility, requires dollars. It
looks like there will have to be some money involved in it, and
that is my concern. If we don't allocate the funds, we continue
to lose the 10,000 units per year. And I have no quarrel with
flexibility, especially if I am defining flexibility. But since
I am not, it looks like money may be a part of the solution.
Your thoughts on money as a part of the solution?
Mr. Hendrix. The Obama-era Rental Assistance Demonstration
Program is a key source for leveraging private resources.
Because, as we all agree, there is a need for more resources
for housing in America of all types. And leveraging those
private-sector resources the Obama Administration created is a
critical tool for public housing authorities.
Mr. Green. It is critical, but we are still losing 10,000
units per year, notwithstanding the good intentions of that
program--
I know that my time is up, Mr. Chairman. I just want to
make this final comment. The greatness of America is determined
not by how we treat people who live in the suites of life, but
how we treat people at the bottom of life, children, and how we
treat seniors in the twilight of their life. This is not what
we want to see our country look like. I yield back. Thank you.
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Green.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Posey of Florida for 5
minutes.
Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing today.
Looking at this hearing and the legislation appended to
this hearing, I am tempted to view this hearing as public
housing, back to the future. And given the enthusiasm of some,
it is as if public housing had never been tried in this country
before. Obviously, it was tried, often with disastrous results.
And while there may be many places where it was successful,
many of us are old enough to remember that many public housing
projects became poster children for urban decay, crime, and
drugs. It's not the ideal place where you would expect anybody
to prosper. We moved away from public production of housing to
tenant-based housing that provided income to low-income
families to purchase market-provided housing. I believe we left
the public housing behind for tenant-based market programs for
good reason. And we can, and we should certainly look to
improve conditions that thwart affordable housing like
crippling costs and increasing overregulation, and try to drive
down the cost of housing, but I really don't think going back
to the future with public housing is the answer.
Some people don't want to hear this, but I tend to think
that President Trump's economic policies, which resulted in the
lowest minority unemployment rates in history and increased the
economic value of every single person in the workplace because
you had more job openings than you had people looking for work,
were steps in the right direction to helping more people become
able to afford the American Dream of homeownership.
Mr. Hendrix, what does your research tell you about the
cost-effectiveness of providing low-income housing with the
public housing model versus the tenant-based model that
currently dominates Federal assistance?
Mr. Hendrix. Thank you very much for that question. One of
the things that we have learned over time is that shifting
towards a more modern rental-assistance programs helps more
people and delivers better results. A great example of that is
the Section 8 tenant-based voucher program. It is a more
streamlined program that gets money directly to the people in
need.
Meanwhile, the public housing that we do have--take
Philadelphia's Housing Authority, just 6 percent of their
annual budget actually comes from tenant rents. The rest of it
has to come from subsidies somewhere, and increasingly it has
been at higher and higher levels of government and even that
has never been enough. The truth is, there will never be enough
dollars for the public housing that we have. It wasn't enough
in the 1950s, and it is never enough today, so we need to look
to better, more modern approaches. We started doing that
decades ago. We should not backtrack on the advances and gains
that we have already made.
Mr. Banna. If I could just jump in?
Mr. Posey. Could you comment on how regulations are
currently driving up the cost of affordable housing and how
much the regulations add to the cost?
Mr. Hendrix. In the case of a City like San Francisco, the
cost of regulation, almost a regulatory tax, easily adds
hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit that is built. And by
the way, that also raises the cost of building affordable
housing units. It can add hundreds of thousands of dollars, and
up to a decade of delays to the cost of those units. And it
means that we have a shortage of anywhere from six to seven
million units across this country. Again, if that applies to
private housing, it surely applies to public housing too. And
we can work, even at the Federal level, with localities to
loosen those regulations so that we can have more housing for
more people where there is demand.
Mr. Posey. Yes. We have had committee hearings on this
before, and kind of tried to offer some kind of a Federal
carrot, if you would make housing more affordable for people.
How do you think we would best convince local governments to do
that?
Mr. Hendrix. First of all, just providing information
helps. I would also state there is a bipartisan Quimby Act that
has been discussed for quite some time now. I would say, too,
having a race to the top where localities and jurisdictions can
compete for resources and demonstrate that they are doing
everything they can to increase the availability and
affordability of housing so that you can not only provide those
carrots, but also celebrate those jurisdictions that are not
being incredibly exclusive or keeping people out who want to
live in neighborhoods of opportunity, which include those who
are voucher holders as well.
Mr. Posey. Is there a database available, readily
available, that shows the added non-value-added cost of
housing?
Mr. Hendrix. HUD has some data, but there is much work to
be done.
Mr. Posey. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Cleaver. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr.
Lawson.
Mr. Lawson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is really
an honor to be on this subcommittee, and I would like to
welcome all of the witnesses to this panel.
I have a unique-type situation, and what I mean by that is
that for many years I was involved in college coaching. I
recruited in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, and Miami, and most of
the time we were recruiting in housing facilities, housing
projects. So, I have been to a lot of them over the years,
quite a few, and I have seen the conditions, and I always
really wanted to see if there was something that I could have
done to help out.
So my question today is to all of the panel, Public housing
is an important asset to communities across the nation and in
the home of millions of American seniors, people with
disabilities, and families sharing decades. However, Congress
has underfunded public housing for some reason or another.
Today, it is estimated that there is a $70 billion backlog of
capital needs for our public housing stock. Each year we lose
about 10,000 units of public housing due to this disrepair.
That is, the 10,000 affordable housing units that could have
prevented evictions and homelessness of 10,000 households are
gone. Without an investment in public housing infrastructure,
these are important assets and the Federal dollars that have
gone into building or preserving them will be a huge loss.
Due to the lack of Federal investment in public housing,
families are suffering from minor to serious maintenance issues
that have sometimes caused health hazards. What is the human
cost of not repairing public housing infrastructure? I have
seen it over and over and over again in the big cities when I
was coaching. In my district, I still look and see some of the
same type situations that still exist.
And so my question to the panel is, please give me your
opinion on what is the human loss? And also, I want to say one
other thing. I know my own timeout. I have been thinking about
doing housing IRAs for people living in public housing to be
able to save money on a tax-free basis to be able to eventually
come out of public housing. I know I have said a whole lot,
leaving you with limited time to respond, but you all are
welcome to comment on it.
Mr. Banna. I would like to jump in. Excellent question,
Representative Lawson. Absolutely. We don't believe public
housing is the sole solution, but it is the fabric of our
affordable housing network that needs to be preserved, and
needs to be solidified going forward. The families who live in
public housing need the commitment from Congress and from the
Administration to find and bring those units up to a modern
standard.
Absolutely, vouchers are great, and we want to see an
expansion of the voucher program, however, there are not enough
available units to utilize the vouchers as readily in many
communities as there are needed, but public housing is there.
It is hard units that are locally owned. And so absolutely, the
local communities need to decide and have the option, actually,
to make the decisions of what is the best affordable housing
for their community, and public housing can be one of those.
We are talking about housing that fits into a local
community. We are not putting highrise units into single-
family-home communities. Public housing can fit into the
community through single-family, duplex, or townhouse, row-
house styles. So, the public housing can be modernized to fit
into local communities, and that is what must be done and must
be committed to be done.
Mr. Lawson. Would anyone else care to comment? I have about
50 seconds left.
Mr. Duran. Yes, Representative Lawson, Oscar Duran here. I
am really grateful that you asked about human law. The reality
is for me and my experience is the challenge is a lot of
judgment goes towards specifically into the housing program and
the human law, in my opinion, in answer to your question, in
the multiple amount of housing programs and strategies to make
a holistic pattern to look and serve every human and not leave
anyone behind. I think that public housing is usually judged as
a program because, unfortunately, it puts the amount of
segregation and poverty in our current base and in concentrated
poverty.
I get concerned with the idea of just saying, how do I take
some of my elderly families who can't access units, so they
don't want it, and I have to give them a voucher and now I just
don't have to look at their poverty.
We need a program like public housing, like HCV and other
tools that we don't know about yet, to serve holistically our
entire community. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Posey. Thank you.
Chairman Cleaver. Mr. Hollingsworth from Indiana is now
recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hollingsworth. Good afternoon, and I really appreciate
everyone joining this great hearing. Affordable housing is
something I have been passionate about since long before I came
to Congress, but I have grown even more passionate about it
while in Congress. Increasing affordable housing access has
been a top priority. And, in fact, although it was mentioned, I
think after Mr. Posey's questions earlier, I was the one who
introduced, with our former colleague, Mr. Heck, now Lieutenant
Governor of the great State of Washington, the Yes in My
Backyard Act, which passed the House last year with strong
bipartisan support.
It is my fervent belief that affordable housing is an issue
that impacts rural Americans, suburban Americans, and urban
Americans. And the answer to how do we make housing within
reach of very American family, it is ultimately to increase the
supply of housing to make sure that more housing can come
online in a wider variety of areas and a wider variety of types
of housing.
And so, Mr. Hendrix, I wanted to focus on you for a second,
because something I have continued to hear in my conversations
across the district with home builders and my conversations
across the district with those who want to buy homes is, gosh,
it feels like the regulatory barriers at the local level are
really inhibiting supply growth, and thus we are seeing in an
increasing demand environment, crises escalating out of control
of American families. Talk to me a little bit about what you
are seeing in terms of local regulatory control and barriers to
entry?
Mr. Hendrix. Congressman Hollingsworth, that is an
excellent question. I couldn't agree more that relative to the
demand that we have for housing in America, supply is just not
keeping up. And more often than not, it is because of local
limits on where and how and how much you can build of housing.
And as I have said before, this applies not only to private
housing, but to public housing too. These regulatory barriers--
among them land-use and zoning rules, but also local impact
fees--prevent millions of new houses from being built across
this country. And these are not just sticks, stones, and
bricks. These are homes, places for people to call home, to
build a new future, to gain equity, something that you don't
get in public housing, and to be able to actually provide a
roof and a shelter for their families and to have a future.
These regulatory barriers can easily add hundreds of
thousands of dollars to the cost of building a new home. And
this is something that local jurisdictions should take the lead
on fixing, but States and even government can help provide
incentives and information, and in the case of States, take the
lead in saying, regulate this and then go no further. And this
is absolutely critical for our growth and for fighting
inequality in America. This should be a bipartisan agreement.
Mr. Hollingsworth. Mr. Hendrix, I couldn't agree more, and
certainly in my district, I hear about this every single day.
We have seen great disparities in outcomes, and frankly, for
families just by the difference in regulatory environment, one
county compared to the next. And I tell people all the time, we
don't have an inability to build homes in this country. We have
restrictions that are keeping us from exercising more of that
ability to build homes.
You wrote a recent article, I think it was in Bloomberg,
talking about making zoning hyperlocal. Forgive me for not
knowing, and hopefully educate us a little bit. What do you
mean by making zoning hyperlocal?
Mr. Hendrix. What I mean is that individual streets or
blocks could be designated to have the freedom to increase
housing where there is demand and where people want it. Right
now, these decisions on what is called upzoning, taking zoning
restrictions and increasing the amount to be built, are often
made at a community level, and various community members may
fear the cost of increased traffic, even though at the
individual level, individual property owners are better off.
And it also allows for greater fairness in communities when we
add more housing.
So giving individual streets or blocks the freedom to be
able to increase the value of their property, to add more units
where there is demand. There is an incredible opportunity in
that just being able to add an accessory to a unit in a
backyard garage apartment could increase housing in high-demand
places like California.
Mr. Hollingsworth. Yes. And just to be clear, because I
want to make sure everyone understands, you are not talking
about, hey, this block could say, let us allow a chemical plant
to build right here. You are not talking about the release of
all zoning restrictions being made. But instead, allowing for
more upzoning within specific boundaries within specific
parameters, right?
Mr. Hendrix. That is right. The same standards apply. The
same nuisance rules apply. This is saying, we want more of the
housing that we love in our neighborhood.
Mr. Hollingsworth. Yes. And this is a great opportunity for
every American family to decide if they want a little bit
denser environment around them, more locally, more clearly
related to them. So, I thank you for that approach. I am going
to send around this article for my colleagues to read. Thank
you for being here, and have a great rest of your day.
Mr. Hendrix. Thank you.
Mr. Hollingsworth. I yield back.
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Hollingsworth.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from Iowa, Mrs.
Axne.
Mrs. Axne. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
to the witnesses for being here.
Mr. Duran, I especially want to thank you for the work that
you have done in keeping people in my district in Council
Bluffs with a roof over their heads during this really
difficult time. Of course, the pandemic has been the worst time
to put people out on the streets. And as you are probably
aware, research has found that the eviction moratoria reduced
COVID deaths by 11 percent. I think that is a great statistic
that we need to really be taking into consideration about how
important it is to keep a roof over people's heads, and we
could have even done more.
I know what you have done, and for folks like you it hasn't
been easy, and that you can't help everyone who needs it. But
so many Iowans truly do appreciate what you are doing. So I
just really first wanted to start by asking, what is the
number-one thing that we could be doing to support you in
helping people find housing?
Mr. Duran. We need more collaborative aspects as a
community. We need more partnerships with our fellow agencies,
or providers, or for-profit developers. We talk this game as a
community that we will work together, but when the brick hits
the road or whatever that saying is, we fail to really make a
consistent pattern together. And I'll give you an example: due
to the pandemic, we had to stop doing inspections. And we are
starting to get a lot of roaches and bedbugs, and we are trying
to get them under control, but we have some elderly residents
who can no longer get care from their providers because they
don't want them to come in with the infestation. But the
reality is some of our families utilizing the public housing
program now need dependent living, not independent living. But
there is nowhere and no partner where I can send them.
So the biggest support we really could have is, of course,
always going to be financial, but we need a more collaborative
effort across our different agencies and partners in the
community to really fix and address these systemic poverty
issues for every facet of every person in our community.
Mrs. Axne. I appreciate you bringing that up. And of
course, having a strategic, unified approach to it is going to
move us a lot further. So, that is a really great point that we
haven't spent as much time talking about in the Financial
Services Committee, so I appreciate that.
I do know that nationally, only one in four people eligible
for housing vouchers actually gets one. Can you walk us through
the resources you have to help Iowans find housing right now
and how does that compare with the demand that you are dealing
with?
Mr. Duran. Absolutely. The two biggest ones, and now we are
speaking about our housing choice voucher program. We have what
is called a Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) Program. We don't
have a lot of participants. We have had the majority graduate.
The best we can do right now with trying to build a good
relationships with the landlords is to continue to welcome them
and ask, how can we support you, offering more opportunities
for our participants? And so, that is all we can do right now.
But I can tell you there is a shortage, and so we had to
change our income standards as well, because one of the things
that we did in December so that people could have a larger
amount to look for just two and three bedroom units, in our
county, I had over 80 families who, after being 16 months on
the waiting list, got there and there was no housing stock
available for them. And it really, literally broke my heart
that there was nothing available. We quickly tried to partner
with our surrounding PHAs to see if we could port them out, but
they, too, had a backlog.
So as others, like Mr. Hendrix, just pointed out, there is
a dire need for this housing across-the-board, but
unfortunately, all of the development we are seeing is for a
specific AMI, and they call it affordable housing, but it is
129 AMI and up, not our low-income populations. Sorry. My
tangent.
Mrs. Axne. No, no, no. Listen, I appreciate that, and I
know that you have a smaller housing agency. And are there
things that make it even more difficult, from the area that you
are trying to help with folks and the size of your agency? And
could we be more focused on that?
Mr. Duran. Absolutely. And I am going to say that we are at
the max, because we only have two buildings, two public housing
communities, with 295 vouchers between them, with zero studios
and one-bedrooms. That means we have no families with children
in our thing, not by design, but by sheer size. Where are the
low-income families living who need programs like ours? Where
are they? We know they need the assistance, but we don't have
the resources available to build more low-income housing for
them. And so, that is kind of the next step, we really need to
say, how do we talk about that housing shortage for those
different family sizes?
Mrs. Axne. I appreciate that, and I think that is another
reason why we also need to address temporary housing as part of
this whole structural piece as well. Lastly, though, I know you
have B-Link in Council Bluffs which, for those of you who
aren't aware, this is a community-based internet service. Has
that been helping people that you are serving?
Mr. Duran. A little bit. It [inaudible] keeping our
[inaudible] so we invested in our [inaudible] in my testimony.
We could not spend the [inaudible] amount for our public
housing community, so it is not the best, but that is one of
the big demands [inaudible], better signal [inaudible].
Mrs. Axne. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
I yield back.
Chairman Cleaver. Thank you, Mrs. Axne.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr.
Taylor, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. Mr.
Hendrix, I really appreciate your perspectives on this as I
think about my own private career in commercial real estate. I
saw oftentimes where zoning restrictions, requirements, drove
up the price of housing. And literally in some communities
drove pricing to the point where people who worked for the
city, for example, police officers, literally couldn't live in
the city that they were serving because prices had been driven
up by zoning laws that were well-intended, but over time just
drove up prices. And then, there is literally no affordable
housing. And when I say affordable, I don't mean for low-
income, I mean for medium-income families.
As you think about this at the Federal level, and you have
already given us some ideas on this, does it make sense for the
Federal Government to continue to subsidize housing in
communities that have driven the cost of housing to the point
that no one there can afford it?
Mr. Hendrix. It is absolutely a fair question to ask if we
are sending community development block grants to communities
that will really only allow housing for those who, say, are in
six figures or more. Is that really what we should be
supporting? Is that really creating communities of opportunity?
As some of my fellow witnesses have said, if you are having
exclusive housing communities, that means that providing
vouchers to somebody, providing money for more vouchers will be
ineffective. So while we look to provide more support directly
to the people who need it, I would also encourage us to look at
how we can allow flexibility to add more housing so that a
voucher can meet shelter needs in the marketplace.
Mr. Banna. And I think to solve that issue, one of the
options is public housing that is already owned locally,
affordable housing, permanent affordable housing. Vouchers,
again, we need to fix the stock issue and make sure there are
more units. And to get there, we have current units in place.
They need to be invested in because we know those will be
available for the police officers, for the teachers, for the
low-income families in the community so they can live in the
communities where they work, where they shop, and be a strong
economic backbone to that community.
Mr. Taylor. I appreciate that perspective, but again, the
concern is, are we, as Congress, subsidizing and encouraging a
zoning strategy which then drives the housing stock to the
point that the housing authority is the only place to get it?
And so, you are literally helping create this environment which
makes it prohibitive to build this stock, which then drives out
lower-income people from the community where the only place
they can go is a housing authority.
And I am not sure that is really just. To me, what is just
is having a level playing field. I am fortunate to live in
Plano, Texas, where we have relatively straightforward zoning
requirements and it is relatively inexpensive to build new
space. And that has been a tremendous recipe for success for my
community. We have been very economically successful. There
are, in fact, lots of new companies, and they continuously cite
the low cost of housing as one of the biggest--it's not the
number-one thing they say, but it is certainly on the list of
things. It comes up over and over again, hey, you have
affordable housing.
But the reason we have affordable housing--we have land
like everybody else does--is because we have reasonable zoning,
where there is cooperation. And again, I just worry about
creating the wrong incentives that say, oh, you have created
zoning that makes it really expensive. We are going to throw
extra money to you because you have a real housing problem. And
they have a housing problem, but it is not the market that has
created that. It is because of zoning decisions that are made
by the leaders there.
Mr. Hendrix. And speaking--
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Hendrix, I will give you--
Mr. Hendrix. --of the native of North Texas, I appreciate
the natural affordability of North Texas and the decisions that
they have made. Look, being able to not just have public
housing be a housing of last resort or be the only choice that
is available to people, I think is absolutely critical.
Investing in more housing and more housing choice is the answer
to creating more housing opportunity in this country. Whether
you buy or rent, you should be able to know that, as one of my
fellow witnesses here said, it is not just housing that is
suffering from, potentially, roaches and bed bugs that is your
only choice available, but a choice that is in the private
sector, is in the market, and is in places of opportunity,
neighborhoods of opportunity is absolutely critical.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Hendrix.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Cleaver. The gentleman yields back.
All of the members of this subcommittee are vital, and I
appreciate all of the testimony that you have given today,
whether you live in public housing or not. I am also very
pleased that the next gentleman, who is new to the committee,
Mr. Torres from New York, also, like three others of us, grew
up in public housing and brings a lot of information
experientially to the table.
The gentleman from New York, Mr. Torres, is now recognized
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Torres. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would not be in the
United States Congress were it not for public housing and the
stability it gave me and my family. So the subject of public
housing strikes close to home for me. I am a product of the New
York City Housing Authority, which is the largest provider of
affordable housing 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 United States.
Despite the critical safety net that it provides, NYCHA has
been so savagely starved of funding at the hands of the Federal
Government, that it has $40 billion worth of capital needs. I
have seen children who have been poisoned by lead, who have
sustained brain damage that will haunt them for the rest of
their lives. I have seen senior citizens who, in the cold of
winter, have left their ovens on, risking death from carbon
monoxide exposure in order to get the barest amount of heat in
their apartments.
These are but a few examples of how the Federal Government
has endangered the lives of public housing residents. Nowhere
has the Federal Government shown a greater disregard for human
life than in public housing, where tenants often languish in
conditions of mold and mildew, leaks, lead, vermin, and rodents
with no consistent heat and hot water in the winter.
My first question is for Mr. Banna. What is the overall
capital need for public housing in the United States?
Mr. Banna. Actually, that's an excellent question. By our
calculations, and using HUD data and HUD formulas, we gather it
is about $70 billion, and probably greater at this point.
Mr. Torres. You said $70 billion?
Mr. Banna. $70 billion, yes.
Mr. Torres. $70 billion. And how much do you receive in
capital funding from the Federal Government?
Mr. Banna. It is in the high $2 billions for all housing
authorities across the country in the last few years, and the
annual accrual rate that HUD determined was $3.4 billion per
year.
Mr. Torres. You said about $2 billion?
Mr. Banna. $2.7-, $2.8 billion.
Mr. Torres. $2.8 billion, okay. So, you have a capital need
of $70 billion, yet you only receive $3 billion in capital
funding from the Federal Government? And is it fair to say that
the capital need is so overwhelming that only the Federal
Government realistically has the funds to address it?
Mr. Banna. Yes. Due to the disinvestment and the lack of
funds over a number of years and decades, we believe it is the
responsibility of the Federal Government and Congress to fund
that and reinvest in public housing.
Mr. Torres. Public housing is primarily regulated by the
Federal Government, primarily funded by the Federal Government,
primarily established by Federal law, the Housing Act of 1937.
Is it fair to say that public housing is therefore a Federal
obligation?
Mr. Banna. I think that is fair. The Federal responsibility
for public housing is there. Housing authorities are working
very diligently to improve conditions and maintain their public
housing using any resources they have available to them at this
time, but they need the Federal Government to step in.
Mr. Torres. There is a sense in which the Federal
Government has the same responsibility for public housing that
a private landlord would have for private housing. And what
would happen if a private landlord did to his privately-owned
housing what the Federal Government has done to public housing?
What do you think would happen to that private landlord?
Mr. Banna. Probably, in most jurisdictions, they wouldn't
be allowed to rent that unit.
Mr. Torres. They would probably face civil and criminal
penalties. And yet, when the Federal Government endangers the
lives of public housing residents, there are no consequences.
There is a double standard. The Federal Government has the
resources. We invest well over $100 billion annually in
housing. Do you know where most of those housing dollars go?
Mr. Banna. There are a number of programs. The voucher
program does receive considerable funding. Public housing does
receive funding, just not enough funding at this time.
Mr. Torres. Let me answer that question for you. It is the
mortgage interest deduction, about $100 billion a year, which
is more than the capital needs of all of the public housing in
the United States. So the Federal Government, via the mortgage
interest deduction, is willing to generously subsidize
homeownership for a wealthier population, but has not been
willing at all to properly fund public housing for poor people
of color.
And it is worth noting that the systematic defunding of
public housing is a bipartisan tradition. It has been defunded
under both Democratic and Republican Administrations and under
both Democratic and Republican Congresses. The defunding of
public housing is a textbook example of starving the beast. You
defund public housing, thereby causing it to fail, and you
thereby claim that the failure is the inevitable result of
government incompetence, and government mismanagement.
Do you share my view that the humanitarian crisis in public
housing is primarily a consequence of Federal disinvestment?
Mr. Banna. I do, and I think now is the time to change
that.
Chairman Cleaver. The gentleman's time has expired. Thank
you very much for your response.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from Ohio, Mrs.
Beatty, who is also the Chair of our Subcommittee on Diversity
and Inclusion, as well as the Chair of the Congressional Black
Caucus.
Mrs. Beatty. Thank you so much to my chairman, and also to
our ranking member. I don't think I could have planned a better
segue into my comments. I am going to have one question, but I
am going to drop a question to make a comment after listening
to Congressman Torres.
We all get to this committee in a variety of ways as we are
talking about public housing, some, as you have heard, because
they grew up in public housing. I worked in public housing and
as a part of the movement. But what is interesting is that
after listening to Congressman Torres, I need to tell my story.
My mother wanted to live in public housing when my father
was serving in the war, but his pension to her with two babies
was too much. And it was predominantly White and it was Desoto
Bass. It was the best place we had ever seen. It was brick. It
had beautiful shrubberies around it. It had a front door and a
back door, and it was amazing. And we were denied to live in
public housing.
Fast-forwarding as I became a young adult, my first job was
at Dayton Metropolitan Public Housing. And I can tell you over
a 25-year period, it didn't look the same. And it speaks to all
of the things that Congressman Torres and others have talked
about. So when I think about the rich history we have, and I am
going to date myself, this is not new. If you go back to 1966,
in Chicago with the Housing Authority and HUD was sued for
alleging that public housing had been built purposefully to
keep Black families segregated from the White neighborhoods.
And then, less dollars were put into it, and it became a
stigma to live in public housing. Some of the best and
brightest individuals I know were my friends, and I look to
this committee. We have chairmen, we have Members of Congress
who grew up and lived in public housing. So I guess when I look
at Economist Raj Chetty, who found in his Moving to Opportunity
experiment that a child's long-term economic outcome is tied to
a Zip Code, we do disservice oftentimes to that individual. So
when we cut funds, when we don't make investments in public
housing, it gives me great pause to ask why?
Now, let me go to my question, and this is for you, Mr.
Gage. Over the past several years, the Columbus Metropolitan
Housing in my district has been converting their public housing
units to project-based vouchers through the Rental Assistance
Demonstration (RAD) Program. In your streamlined annual PHA
plan for 2020, your housing authority said it was evaluating
its public housing properties to convert them to rent. Why
would housing authorities such as yours look to converting its
public housing to project-based housing through RAD? What are
the benefits for it, and how much of your 4,300 public housing
units do you anticipate converting?
Mr. Gage. Thank you, Representative Beatty. We did go
through that analysis and we are finalizing it right now. We
looked at it really because it was the only option to
recapitalize. Capital funds were dwindling. There is no public
housing production program. The only production program that
exists, the only avenue, is through the Low-Income Housing Tax
Credit Program. So if we are talking about flexibility of
options, right now we only have one option and that is to pair
with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program and utilize RAD
conversion.
So given that that is kind of our last resort of how to
take care of these public housing properties, we did that
analysis and we found that there was a handful, five or six,
especially since the new legislation passed with the 4 percent
floor on tax credits, that actually kind of worked, doing a
recapitalization under the RAD program. But there is a
substantial subset, probably more than half of our portfolio,
that won't even work under that scenario and it is because in
order to work with the 4 percent tax credit program, you need
to have high property values like you do in Columbus and like
you do in large cities so you can access the acquisition
credits. And in Akron, and in rural areas with low acquisition
costs, you can't access those 4 percent credits and really make
it work.
Mrs. Beatty. Okay. I yield back. We need to have further
discussions about how we fund and what we should do in Congress
for public housing, because we know we still have a wait list.
We still have people who are trying to get Section 8 and
haven't been able to get it, and consequently, are still in
public housing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Cleaver. Mr. Steil is now recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Steil. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chairman
Cleaver, and I appreciate you having today's hearing, and
having me on. I want to thank Chairwoman Waters and you,
Chairman Cleaver, for holding today's hearing. And I want to
state that we share the goal of ensuring that every American
family has a safe place to live in our community and a job and
opportunities. And even before the pandemic, what we really saw
was housing and how vitally important it is to communities
across the country.
I have said and I have some concerns maybe about the
specific focus of this hearing being just public housing. It is
not clear to me that public housing is an effective lifeline
for a lot of our struggling families across the country.
Mr. Hendrix, you wrote in your testimony that the lived
reality of public housing across America is a social engineer's
dream turned nightmare. Could you add a little color to what
you mean by that?
Mr. Hendrix. Thank you very much for the question.
Unfortunately, just looking at the example of New York City's
Housing Authority, which is in the back yard of the Manhattan
Institute, really illustrates that. You have housing
administrators who provide housing that one tenant described in
a lawsuit later filed, ``resembled a Third World country.''
They deal with toxic mold and asbestos. They are not kept safe.
They are not kept healthy. Their children are poisoned with
lead.
This is something that certainly is part of the deferred
maintenance and the backlog. We talk about billions of dollars,
but these are hundreds of thousands of lives that are also at
risk here. And the fact is that this is a problem, not just of
money, but of actual lack of care, a lack of care by NYCHA, and
this is not just my opinion. This is the opinion of judges.
This is the opinion of the Federal Monitor. It's the opinion
even now of the new chairman of NYCHA, and we need to take
those warnings seriously because they represent the actual
lived reality in the largest public housing complex and project
in America.
Mr. Steil. So to dig in, I have heard others say that
public housing in particular, not other aspects of housing, but
public housing has been a lifeline during the pandemic. Do you
think that is an accurate statement?
Mr. Gage. Actual public housing in New York was more likely
to lead to you getting a case of COVID-19 and more likely to
leave you dying of COVID-19 than not living in public housing.
So I am not sure that is entirely fair, and it is not just
catching it, being hospitalized, and potentially dying of
COVID-19 that was a threat. It was everything else that came
with it. NYCHA administrators just stopped keeping up care for
apartments that were barely being paid for before. Elevators
just simply stopped working, ventilators weren't repaired,
pipes continued to leak. Some pipes, by the way, in NYCHA
apartments have been leaking for 30 years and--
Mr. Steil. So, there are a lot of examples. It sounds like
you and I share a lot of concerns about public housing. Another
question is, how do we help people who are in need in our
community. How do we make sure people have safe, affordable
housing that allows them to live a productive life, to live out
the American Dream? I look at some other opportunities that are
out there in large part thanks to the Trump/Ryan tax reforms
that we saw, in particular, what I call the opportunity of
Opportunity Zones that we are seeing starting to build up
across the country.
Can you talk a little bit about how Opportunity Zones can
help encourage more affordable housing, in particular in some
of our most challenged neighborhoods across the United States
as an alternative to what I view as the old model of public
housing?
Mr. Gage. That is right. What you are trying to do is get
more housing to pencil out. So by decreasing the tax burdens
that come from investing in low-income communities as the
Opportunity Zones do, and decreasing that tax burden not just
over 1 or 2, but 5 or 10 years or even longer periods of time,
that means that more affordable housing can easily pencil out.
This could be simply straight-up affordable housing. It could
also just be smaller microunits. Whatever it is, we are making
it more profitable and more available to build more housing,
and we should get more of that. I also believe that as much--
Mr. Steil. Expanding and encouraging further some of these
Opportunity Zones, in your analysis, would provide for a
greater opportunity for additional affordable housing in some
of our more challenged neighborhoods across the United States?
Mr. Gage. Absolutely. This is a bipartisan solution and we
should, in a bipartisan way, seek their success in Opportunity
Zones.
Mr. Steil. And one other area that I don't think we talk
enough about--we talk about it some, but not enough--is the
high cost of housing, particularly when you look at Los
Angeles, and you look at New York City, and the zoning that is
associated with that. You know we--it will be for another time.
I appreciate your time, and I yield back.
Chairman Cleaver. Mr. Steil, thank you very much.
And let me now thank all of our witnesses for bringing us
testimony today, and for your generous responses to our
questions.
The Chair notes that some Members may have additional
questions for this panel, which they may wish to submit in
writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open
for 5 legislative days for Members to submit written questions
to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record.
Also, without objection, Members will have 5 legislative days
to submit extraneous materials to the Chair for inclusion in
the record.
Mr. Stivers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Great job.
Chairman Cleaver. I'm looking forward to sitting down and
talking. I don't know who else is still around, but what we
might want to sit down and do is come up with a list of some of
the better ideas, and obviously that is subjective, but the
better ideas, and see if we can actually move some of these
better ideas that we all agree could be corrective steps.
Mr. Stivers. That is a great first step, Mr. Chairman. I
will look forward to that when we get back in D.C., and are
together, and I hope we can do more hearings and meetings in
person now that a lot more people are vaccinated.
Chairman Cleaver. Yes. I think almost all of us are, but,
yes. I am excited about it. If we did some kind of a pilot
project, then we wouldn't have to tap legislation to do
something nationwide. For example, a unit on the [inaudible]
shelf. I would be a little hesitant to want to do that
nationwide, because there is a collapse. It would be herculean.
But anyway, you and I have worked together. I think we might be
able to do something. We have Mr. Torres, who grew up in public
housing. He is very knowledgeable about what is going on, but
you don't necessarily need to have lived in public housing to
come up with good ideas about it. So, I'm looking forward to
that when we get back.
Mr. Stivers. I think it will be great. A lot of common
ground, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman Cleaver. Thanks, everybody.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:45 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
March 24, 2021
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