Small Public Housing Authority Act

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we agree that this is a useful piece of legislation. I am one who believes in appropriate regulation. And if you believe in appropriate regulation, you should be committed to doing away with inappropriate regulation. When you overregulate, when you put too much of a burden on people who should not have the burden, you undercut the case for those restrictions where they should apply. Clearly, when you talk about housing authorities, you are talking about entities that differ greatly; and this is one of those cases where to quote, I guess Marx I am afraid, ``Quantity can become quality.'' Differences in size can become so important that they become difference in kind.

When you talk of the New York Public Housing Authority or the Los Angeles Public Housing Authority and you are talking about some of the very small public housing authorities, you are talking about very different entities, and you ought not try to put them all under one. So we appreciate the initiative that came on the other side from those who wanted to make this more flexible.

We did have some concerns. By ``we'' I did mean myself and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), who chairs the housing subcommittee, because we did not want to have tenants who, after all, are human beings in large authorities as well as small to be somehow inadvertently disadvantaged. So we appreciate the fact that the majority is willing to negotiate with us, and I always say that with trepidation lest my having acknowledged that we worked out something bipartisan in our committee and transformed something routine into an ideological war. But I would assure people that the negotiations here were of a fairly calm level.

What we did, essentially, was to maintain the statutory role for resident advisory boards. They are advisory, and obviously it is important to watch housing authorities that are small and talk to the people who live there.

Secondly, we left in a requirement that they have to have a public hearing at least once a year to talk about their objectives. I think these are beneficial. Finally, we wanted to make clear that they did have to self-certify that they were meeting the civil rights and fair housing laws.

No one has to investigate them, but leaving that out, leaving that requirement itself out of the equation, the vast majority of housing authorities are well-intentioned, and you do not volunteer to be on a housing authority unless you really care about the people who are there. The people who run the small housing authorities are very often very civic-minded people, people who care about the poor. Very rarely are the people who run these authorities getting back any kind of compensation, enough to make up for the time. But we want to make sure that we did not send the wrong message.

So with those three fairly minor modifications that the majority accepted, this is a fairly useful bill, and we hope that it is passed.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself some additional time to simply say, I appreciate what the gentleman from Texas said in closing which is to focus on the tenants.

I think it is important that we continue to pay attention to housing authorities. Too often, people slip into the mistake of equating homeownership with homes. Homeownership is very important, yes, to the sense that people are economically and other ways able to own homes, that is a good thing. But a large number of low-income people, through a variety of reasons, economic and others, are not going to own homes, and we ought to be clear that it is the right of people to a home that we want to work for or at least the ability of people to have a decent home.

In many cases, that will be homeownership. But in some cases, it will not be, and we want to make it very clear, as far as the public sector is concerned, we ought to have the same obligation to help people make the most out of their home, whether they are tenants or owners. This is an example of how we do that.

So I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3422) to amend the United States Housing Act of 1937 to exempt small public housing agencies from the requirement of preparing an annual public housing agency plan, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3422, the Small Public Housing Authority Act, and wish to commend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer) for his work on this important legislation.

The Small Public Housing Authority Act would amend the United States Housing Act of 1937 to exempt a small public housing agency from a requirement to prepare an annual public agency plan if the agency administers not more than a total of 250 dwelling units and section 8 vouchers and is not a troubled agency and provides assurances of resident participation.

Currently, public housing authorities are required to submit both a 5-year plan and an annual plan to HUD. The 5-year PHA plan addresses the agency's mission and their plan to achieve their mission. Specifically, the annual plan has typically required public housing authorities to include information on the housing needs of the families in the jurisdiction, strategies to meet these needs, statement of financial resources, and PHA policies governing eligibility, selection, and administrations.

Typically the average streamlined PHA plan is 47 pages with extensive attachments. For a small PHA with limited staff, compiling such a report is both time consuming and labor intensive. The regulatory relief provided in this legislation will give small public housing authorities more time to focus on the needs of their tenants. This exemption of smaller PHAs from filing plans will not affect the ability of tenant organizations to continue to have input with the managers of their developments. Language incorporated into the legislation ensures tenant participation and requires smaller PHAs to provide advanced planning required under the 5-year plans.

Similar legislation sponsored by our good friend, retired Representative Doug Bereuter, was considered by the Financial Services Committee on March 17, 2004, and passed the House under suspension of the rules on May 5, 2004, in the 108th Congress.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3422 deserves our support. I urge its adoption.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer), the sponsor of the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time. I just want to, again, congratulate the gentleman from Texas for his leadership and the cooperation on the other side.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Oxley and Ranking Member Frank.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3422 would exempt public housing authorities with 250 or fewer public housing units and section 8 vouchers combined from the requirement of submitting an annual plan to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the 108th Congress, the House passed a similar legislation sponsored by former Congressman Doug Bereuter. The Senate, however, failed to take up this legislation.

I represent a rural West Texas district. Most of the public housing authorities in my district have fewer than 250 housing units and/or vouchers. Several have part-time directors or directors who split time between public housing authorities.

The annual plan process, mandated by Congress in 1998, requires a significant amount of time and resources for

these public housing authorities. This mandate is especially burdensome on our PHAs, our small ones, because they have few staff resources to devote to the annual plans. While HUD has taken regulatory steps to reduce the reporting burden for small PHAs, the plans still require much unnecessary paperwork and additional time.

Reducing the unnecessary paperwork and reporting will help smaller PHAs better serve their communities and focus on their mission of providing affordable rural housing to rural residents in need.

H.R. 3422 only addresses annual plans. Small PHAs will still complete their HUD 5-year plan.

This legislation also requires PHAs to continue providing their residents with opportunity to help set goals and policies for the housing authority and to continue to certify their civil rights compliance with HUD.

However, I would note that the intent of this legislation is for HUD to keep the annual certification process as simple as possible and not create additional requirements and additional reports for PHAs.

This is a small bill, but it has a positive impact on PHAs in rural areas in my district, and I ask the House that this much-needed, commonsense regulatory relief for small public housing authorities be passed.

As the ranking member said, one of the things that makes sense is when government oversteps its bounds, it is appropriate for government to step back in and correct those. I think this is a much-needed correction so that we can let these small public housing authorities focus on the tenants and not on the paperwork.

I thank, again, the chairman and the ranking member.

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, December 13, 2005, I was unable to vote on the motion to suspend the rules and agree to H. Res. 487, Supporting the goals and ideals of Korean American Day (rollcall 623); on the motion to suspend the rules and pass S. 1027, to require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of each of the Nation's past President and their spouses, respectively, to improve circulation of the $1

coin, to create a new bulletin coin (rollcall 624); on motion to suspend the rules and pass, as amended, H.R. 3422, the Small Public Housing Authority Act (rollcall 625). Had I been present, I would have vote ``yea'' on all 3 measures.

Mr. Speaker, on December 13th, I was serving on a jury in Colorado and so was not able to be present for several votes.

Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: Rollcall No. 623, H. Res. 487--Supporting the goals and ideals of Korean American Day-- ``yes.'' Rollcall No. 624, S. 1047--Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005-- ``yes.'' Rollcall No. 625, H.R. 3422--Small Public Housing Authority Act--``yes.''