Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to introduce bipartisan legislation with my colleague Senator Portman that would align HUD homeless assistance with existing Federal children and youth programs and provide flexibility to local communities to use available resources to meet the needs that they identify. According to the U.S. Department of Education, approximately 1.2 million children were homeless during the 2014 to 2015 school year; this is a 34-percent increase from the 939,903 homeless students in the 2009 to 2010 school year. In California, over 229,000 children experienced homelessness in 2015, nearly four times the 65,000 homeless children in the State in 2003. Unfortunately, the numbers reported by the HUD Point-in-Time count fail to reflect these increasing numbers. According to the national 2015 HUD Point-in-Time count, there were only 206,286 people counted as homeless in households that included children, a fraction of the true number. This is important because only those children counted by HUD are eligible for vital homeless assistance programs and included in local planning efforts. The rest of these children and families are simply out of luck. The Homeless Children and Youth Act of 2017 would allow HUD homeless assistance programs to serve extremely vulnerable children and families, specifically those staying in motels or in doubled-up situations because they have nowhere else to go.…”