Political Quotes

“I offer an amendment that will continue to ensure that the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Multifamily staff remains locally based, connected to communities and on the ground to serve as the eyes and ears of lawmakers. Specifically, this amendment would prohibit HUD from using any of the funds appropriated by this bill for the Multifamily Housing transformation initiative, which is designed to relocate asset management staff and to restructure HUD's Multifamily field offices nationwide. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would effectively stop HUD from closing any of the offices where asset management staff are currently located. When HUD announced its plans for a major restructuring of Multifamily field offices nationwide, I was deeply concerned. Under the plan, HUD will go from 50 Multifamily offices down to 12, with only five of them being designated as ``regional centers.'' The shortcomings of this plan are not more obvious than in my home district, where a decision was made to relocate the Los Angeles field office--one of the busiest hubs in the country. If undeterred, this plan would close the Los Angeles office, uproot its entire staff, and relocate its operations to another regional center, which would now be responsible for more than double its current workload and would be facing the daunting task of serving 73 million people in 14 States across 1.8 million square miles.…”