Political Quotes

“this is rather technical, but it has to do with public housing authorities and their ability to use future Section 8 vouchers on project-based assistance needs. As many know, in the past public housing was constructed when the assistance was tied to the project rather than to an individual. That enabled the public housing authority or other entity to get financing to build the units and then receive the income from the Federal housing assistance. Right now, there is a process for refining the allocation of Section 8 vouchers to public housing authorities so they do not have unused Section 8 vouchers. That has been a good thing because that means the money for housing assistance goes to those who most need it. However, the problem arises when public housing authorities need to put aside or shelve some of the needed Section 8 certificates or vouchers allocated to them in order to provide a basis of funding for construction of additional housing. In some areas--I know in my State and across the country--we can hand out all of the Section 8 vouchers we want for people needing housing assistance, and they do not do much good because there is not housing available. So we have to have the flexibility for the public housing authorities to take some of the vouchers allocated to them and say: We will commit them to this project in order to build the housing we need.…”