Political Quotes

“This manager's amendment is in the nature of a perfecting amendment that makes a few changes to the bill that I hope will be relatively uncontroversial. First, as this bill has moved through the process, we have moved from a program that allocated all of the funds to States to administer to one that, as I described in my opening statement, distributes funds to States, certain metropolitan cities and large urban counties. This amendment simply removes the State as the middle person in allocations to qualifying cities and counties which would instead receive direct allocations from HUD. This will expedite the distribution of funds which is critical in the context of economic stimulus. Second, the amendment brings a definition of operating costs of housing purchased under the program, which is an eligible use under the grant component in line with similar uses in other HUD programs such as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. This just clarifies what is and is not an eligible expense when an entity is operating a purchase property as rental property or preparing it for resale. Finally, to further address the concerns that this bill somehow provides a bailout to lenders, the amendment caps the purchase price of foreclosed properties at the appraised price or 110 percent of the average local single family home price, whichever is less.”