Kendrick Meek: “I just want to make a few favorable comments on the Jackson-Lee amendment from her long experience in working with…”

“I just want to make a few favorable comments on the Jackson-Lee amendment from her long experience in working with residents of public housing and with municipalities. I think that the general concept is good on both sides. I think the housing bill which is before this committee, is a good bill, but I think my colleague, Sheila Jackson-Lee, has hit on a need here, particularly in smaller southern municipalities, that this certainly is overlooking. Her amendment brings into consideration the fact that we have an incoming flux of new citizens coming into some of the southern cities and many of them are of various ethnicities, and certainly in terms of financial stability, many of them are below the poverty level. So, I think what Ms. Sheila Jackson-Lee sees, that this will take a certain trend and there will not be any replacement of these homes. I can understand exactly what he is talking about when I go through my city. I see a lot of them boarded up and many of them are really too good to be destroyed. It seems to me that private entrepreneurs are taking advantage of these places that the Government has spent so much money for all of these years. They are replaceable and they are good for revitalization. I think my colleague is saying, let us take the policy so that it can include some other people, because we have a differentiated type of population. It is not standard. People still need public housing.”