HOPE VI Reauthorization Act of 2006

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

(Ms. WATERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5347, the HOPE VI Reauthorization Act of 2006. I am one of the original cosponsors of the legislation, and I want to take time to congratulate the distinguished chairman, Mr. Oxley; Ranking Member Frank; Mr. Watt; and Mr. Shays for sponsoring this important legislation.

The members of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Affairs, of which I am ranking member, have worked tirelessly to overcome obstacles to extend HOPE VI. Indeed, there is a strong possibility that the HOPE VI program would have expired at the end of this fiscal year without the strong leadership displayed on this bill.

HOPE VI is a valuable program, but not a perfect program. Some of the criticisms include displacement of tenants, delays in development of projects, and a built-in bias toward large urban areas. As with any major Federal program, there are lessons to be learned, and in the case of HOPE VI, many of the challenges that have been identified were addressed in prior reauthorization bills. We also must understand that these concerns must be understood within the context of the different communities that have utilized the HOPE VI program. This might explain why HUD has evaluated HOPE VI grantees on a case-by-case basis, rather than on the basis of formal program requirements.

One major issue compounding HOPE VI is the fact that in many communities the supply of available and affordable housing is not adequate to accommodate those who become displaced. Secondly, the development process related to HOPE VI is far more complicated than what was envisioned by the architects of the program, and many delays are attributed to the needs of the many stakeholders in the community, including tenants.

According to the 2003 GAO report entitled ``HOPE VI Resident Issues and Changes in Neighborhoods Surrounding Grant Sites,'' the Tucson, Arizona, Housing Authority submitted a revitalization plan for a site to the Tucson City Council for approval only after the residents had voted to approve it. This type of deliberative democratic process adds time to the development approval process, whether it is a HOPE VI project or not.

Thirdly, some fear that there is a bias to urban areas under the HOPE VI program requirements. In my view, that is not really a fair criticism because this is merely a program outcome. I see no reason why we would not want to make sure that HUD targets nonurban areas as we move forward to determine HOPE VI works. I have said on numerous occasions that the housing needs of the urban communities are not drastically different than the housing needs of nonurban communities.

Both GAO and CRS provide important findings on the HOPE VI program.

As of June 2004, 56,221 households had been relocated by HOPE VI revitalization grantees. Of these households, 48 percent were moved to public housing, 32 percent were given section 8 vouchers, 6 percent evicted, 19 percent moved to revitalized units, and 13 percent made other housing choices.

The neighborhoods in which 1996 HOPE VI sites are located generally have experienced improvements in indicators such as education, income and housing.

And mortgage lending activity increased in HOPE VI neighborhoods compared to other neighborhoods.

These strong findings are, in part, why I support the HOPE VI reauthorization bill. The bill has strong bipartisan support, and HOPE VI would be reauthorized through 2007, although we had originally intended for the bill to be extended through 2011. Importantly, the factors used to assess grant applications for the programs include need, capacity, quality and leveraging. So perhaps as we move forward, it is more appropriate for the detractors of the program to measure the track record of the HOPE VI program's use of these new criteria and not base the success of the program on individual project outcomes.

By some estimates, HOPE VI has leveraged between $5 billion and $8 billion of private investment in communities across the Nation. The demand for HOPE VI grants in communities throughout the country continues to exceed the available resources. HUD receives three applications for every HOPE VI award made.

The need to revitalize distressed public housing is precisely the reason that HOPE VI was conceived. Communities throughout this country with old, decaying and abandoned public housing stock often located on prime land needed to seek ways to improve the quality of life in their communities. HOPE VI provided one answer to addressing these conditions in its early stages; and with improvement in the way the program will be operated in the future, even greater progress will be made in meeting needs.

Absent the bipartisan support that HOPE VI enjoys today, the elimination of the program was a near certainty. By changing the criteria to evaluate grantee applications, including evaluation of the capacity of the grantees to undertake HOPE VI projects, support for the program should broaden. HOPE VI is an extremely competitive program that reflects success. Communities should be able to include this Federal resource in their revitalization planning efforts immediately and in the future.

I would urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Let me say just one thing at the outset, Mr. Speaker. Prior to the conception of the HOPE VI program, we tended to believe that public housing was a condition that was not alterable, it was not changeable; and, similarly, we believed that it would look pretty much as it did when a public housing unit was conceived.

The signal event that happened when this program was passed in the late 1980s was that, all of a sudden, we recognized that a public housing unit, like any other piece of property in America, can be transformed. It can be made esthetically attractive. It can be made a unit that will attract residents from different income levels. It can be made a place that is not just a shelter, that is not just four walls, but that is a home.

I have to think that that recognition about the capacity to physically change communities has had a carryover impact on the lives of the people who live there.

So put aside all the statistics that we have talked about, put aside the information that we have discussed today about the leveraging of investments and the leveraging of dollars in the communities. This is ultimately about a new stake and a new confidence in places in America that have historically been neglected.

Let me thank a few people. I certainly want to thank the outstanding Chair of this committee, as he leaves the House and moves into the private sector, for being such a consistent voice in support not just of this program but all kinds of other good housing programs for the United States.

Obviously, I want to thank the ranking member for being so diligent on this issue. I want to thank two of my colleagues who are here, Mr. Watt of North Carolina and Ms. Waters of California, who yielded time.

A lot of us support HOPE VI, but what has distinguished Maxine Waters and Mel Watt is that for a period of their whole 14 years in the House they have constantly said, yes, we can make it better, yes, we can fix it, but let us not do away with it. And when the critics and the detractors have questioned this program, the two of them have been enormously vigilant.

Let me certainly thank Mr. Shays for his work, and let me recognize someone whose name has not been called, who is also departing the House, Ms. Harris of Florida.

Twice we have had to bring amendments to the floor of the House to sustain funding for this program. Twice we have had to ask the House to second-guess the administration, to make a dollar commitment to this program. Two years ago, we got 59 Republicans to cross party lines. This year we topped that. We got 64 Republicans to cross party lines. And a lot of that was a function of Ms. Harris' work.

So I want to end on this note. We all agree, or so many of us in this Chamber agree about the value of this program. I hope there are two people in the United States who will take heed of that, the President of the United States and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Because for 4 years now they have given us budgets that would do away with HOPE VI. For 2 years, this House has accurately and correctly second-guessed them and put the money back in. And today this House will make another statement by reauthorizing this program.

This works when the two branches of government that the people select, the executive and the legislative, actually listen to each other. This business works better when the executive branch every now and then takes heed of what we do here.

There are two more budgets, Ms. Waters, that will be issued from the Bush administration before the President takes leave to Crawford. I hope that both of those budgets are much more reflective of Mike Oxley and Chris Shays and Katherine Harris, as well as the numerous people on this side of the aisle who believe in the utility of this program.

So this is an important statement for families who live in these units, and it is a statement of our values as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding time.

I rise in support of H.R. 5347. It is necessary to extend this program, and we are extending it for 1 year, the reauthorization, and that is the best we can do. You may sense frustration in that statement, because there is a sense of frustration. I have been at this HOPE VI for a long time now, and I think we need to go back and trace a little bit of the history of how we got here.

HOPE VI is not a Democratic program. It was introduced under a Republican administration. It was the brainchild of Jack Kemp when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And the idea was that we were not going to make any progress on dealing with community issues as long as we had these tremendous numbers, thousands of people in dense public housing communities in various places throughout the country, and that the only way we could approach the problem effectively was to disperse poverty and create communities with mixed incomes, low-income people, middle-income people, and high- income people. And so HOPE VI was about community revitalization.

All of the complaints I have heard about it over the years make it sound like people don't understand how difficult it is to do community revitalization. Because every time somebody says, well, they didn't finish a project in a year, I say to them, you can do construction in a year, you cannot do community revitalization in a year. It takes time to revitalize a community.

Now, why am I so passionate about this? We have seen five communities in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, completely transformed as a result of HOPE VI. We have seen one community in Greensboro, North Carolina, in my congressional district, completely transformed as a result of HOPE VI. We have seen two communities completely transformed in the Winston Salem part of my congressional district as a result of HOPE VI. We bring a little bit of Federal money, private people come to the table, and you end up with a mixed community in terms of income, racially and otherwise.

And I can tell you, if you come into downtown Charlotte now, you will see a completely different story than you saw 10, 12, 15 years ago. You will see a beautiful community where a concentration of low-income public housing used to be. Now if anybody tells me that is not success, I say I do not know what success is. That was exactly what the program was designed to do.

And I don't understand how this President, on so many issues, including this one, will take a successful program and all of a sudden say this program doesn't work.

Now, coincidentally, most of the money is going into Democratic districts. That is really what the debate, the subtext of a lot of this debate, has been about. We knew where the public housing projects were. They were in most of our congressional districts. We set out to try to do something about those, and we have done something about those using HOPE VI. It has been the single most successful community revitalization and housing program probably that our Nation has ever seen, contrasted with the whole idea of warehousing poor people in concentrations of low-income communities.

So I am passionate about this. I am delighted we are extending this program for a year. But, at the same time, we need to recognize there is not but $99 million even in the appropriations bill that hasn't been passed and finalized. And every time we have had to fight this battle to reauthorize the program we have lost funding for the program, so it gets less and less and less effective at accomplishing its mission.

So I congratulate my friends for extending the program, and I ask for their support, all of our support, for extending a program that is a no-brainer. We ought to all be supporting this program.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on this legislation and to insert extraneous material thereon.

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

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of H.R. 5347, the HOPE VI Reauthorization Act of 2006, introduced by the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays). This important piece of legislation would simply reauthorize the HOPE VI program for one more year and would continue to provide a resource to revitalize severely distressed public housing units.

Since 1993, this program has been an important part of the transformation of public housing by encouraging public housing authorities to seek new partnerships with private entities to create mixed-finance and mixed-income affordable housing that is developed and operated very differently from traditional public housing.

HOPE VI epitomizes public-private partnerships for funding redevelopment projects. Mixed-finance development projects have allowed the government

to raise millions of dollars from the private sector for redevelopment projects using Federal funds as bait. For every governmental dollar, these partnerships can yield $3 or $4 additional in private investment.

Despite the obvious advantages of HOPE VI, the program has needed improvement. In 2003, in a previous reauthorization of HOPE VI, the Financial Services Committee added reforms by requiring the HUD to select grantees, among other criteria, on their capacity to bring planning and ultimately development to fruition within a more expedited time frame.

In addition, the committee was concerned that the HOPE VI program was biased toward larger urban areas. Thus, the committee required that at least 5 percent of the HOPE VI funds be awarded to smaller communities, particularly rural areas, where public housing authorities are not present, to assist in the redevelopment of town areas for affordable housing. Now known as the Main Street Project, many rural communities are able to access these vital redevelopment funds.

The HOPE VI program has been a valuable program in addressing many of this country's housing needs by revitalizing communities rather than simply building public housing. This House has repeatedly spoken on this program by continuing to fund HOPE VI in the relevant appropriations bills year after year.

I would like to thank good friend Chris Shays for his leadership on this important affordable housing program. By reauthorizing HOPE VI, this bill will continue the reforms established in 2003 to ensure that smaller communities have access to important revitalization dollars and will continue to make HOPE VI a cost-effective and efficient program for the American taxpayer.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the able gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), the author of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent).

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

Mr. Speaker, this is a bipartisan bill that, as amended, reauthorizes the HOPE VI program through 2007. Reauthorizing the HOPE VI for an additional year will have an important impact on the lives of low- income people and will also pay tremendous dividends in towns and cities across America.

I am grateful to have worked on this legislation with my colleagues Jim Leach, Maxine Waters, Artur Davis who has worked very hard on this, Mel Watt as well, Charlie Dent, and appreciate the assistance and guidance they have provided.

I also appreciate the support of Chairman Oxley and Ranking Member Frank in moving this bill forward. I

have tremendous admiration for my chairman and ranking member and the work that they have done throughout a number of years. With their assistance, this legislation passed the Financial Services Committee by voice vote.

HOPE VI epitomizes public-private partnerships for funding redevelopment projects. Mixed-finance agreements have allowed the government to raise millions of dollars from the private sector for redevelopment properties using Federal funds as leverage. For every government dollar granted, these partnerships can yield an additional $3 or $4.

Let me give an example of an incredible HOPE VI project that has been completed in Stamford, Connecticut. A $26 million HOPE VI grant leveraged an additional $80 million in State, local, and private funds. The HOPE VI transformed Southfield Village, a dim, crime-ridden, and dilapidated housing project into Southwood Square, a beautiful place to live and raise your children.

It is also a mixed-income community, where low-income families and those paying market rent live side-by-side. I am talking about people who make more than $100,000. Their children play together, and they have the opportunity to grow and learn from one another.

As a result of this Federal assistance, Southwood Square is now a safe place for children to play. Its residents receive job training on site. Others are going to work, and working parents have access to child care facilities. Instead of the BMW belonging to drug dealers, they belong to employees who work for the many businesses in the community. Just as importantly, residents are involved in their community.

I wish Members could see the transformation that has taken place there. Another HOPE VI project at Fairfield Court in Stamford is now beginning and promises to be just as successful as Southwood Square.

The lesson here is, when the Federal Government demonstrates its interest in improving the housing needs of low-income families, the community responds in a big way.

I urge all my colleagues to support this legislation and again thank Chairman Oxley and Ranking Member Frank for their cooperation in bringing this legislation before us, as well as the lead cosponsors on both sides of the aisle for their support. This was a team effort, and that is why passage tonight is so satisfying.