Maxine Waters: “Madam Speaker and Members, I rise this evening to basically talk about what is happening in New Orleans and the fact…”

“Madam Speaker and Members, I rise this evening to basically talk about what is happening in New Orleans and the fact that the city council is going to take a vote on Thursday to determine whether or not they're going to dismantle the big four public housing developments in that city. If they dismantle these public housing units, the City of New Orleans will lose 4,500 units. These units have been boarded up for 2 years. The citizens who lived in these units were evacuated as a result of Katrina and Rita. They are now living in other cities, Houston and Dallas and Austin and Atlanta, all over the place, and they thought they would be able to return once these units were rehabbed. These units, many of them, were not destroyed. Some of them had minimal damage. For example, the one housing development, La Fete, only had water damage on the first level. And they could have not only rehabbed that first level of La Fete projects, they could have opened up those other units, but they did not. They have been boarded up. And people's lives have been in limbo living in these other cities, without the opportunity to come home and without the support that they needed. In my committee, the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, we worked and we put together a bill, H.R. 1227. That bill passed out of that committee and off the floor in March, and we sent it over to the Senate, where it has languished.”