Barney Frank: “What this says is the following: There were people who were living in the gulf area who were receiving some form of…”

“What this says is the following: There were people who were living in the gulf area who were receiving some form of assistance under HUD programs. Some of them lived in public housing, some of them were in vouchers, some of them were living in subsidized housing for the elderly and the disabled. The places where they were living were washed away in the most literal, physical sense. We all agree that we have not yet, in the gulf area, replaced that housing. It's true there have been slowdowns, for instance, in Road Home money in New Orleans. But in Mississippi earlier this year, the Oreck Vacuum Company, which to its credit had tried to help the people in the gulf by reopening a factory that the company had in the gulf, shut the factory down because, they explained, the shortage of housing made it impossible for them to recruit people. There was a physical shortage of housing, and we have people who were once living in the area who have moved to other places. Some of them may still be in the area. We know that employment in the gulf area hasn't yet returned to its prior level, and we have this chicken-and-egg problem of housing and unemployment.”