Barney Frank: “one of the popular and successful innovations in Federal aid to housing in recent years dating back to when the…”

“one of the popular and successful innovations in Federal aid to housing in recent years dating back to when the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gonzalez) was the Chair of the committee is the HOME program. The HOME program is one of the few programs now existing, perhaps the only one, which allows municipalities that feel the need to do housing construction. Many of us feel that we have a terrible problem in this country because of the increased price of housing, particularly in areas of housing shortage. While we are strong supporters of the section 8 voucher program, there is a large consensus, which you saw in the bipartisan witnesses before our hearings, that the voucher program alone is not enough, that it does not deal with the situation increasingly common in many of our areas, metropolitan areas and others, but particularly metropolitan areas, where economic pressures have driven housing prices so high and where production is so difficult for a variety of reasons. The HOME program is the premier general production program. It is strongly supported by elected officials. The President proposed to take $200 million of the HOME funds and restrict them, restrict them in a way that they have not previously been restricted. The HOME program has been a genuine block grant with complete flexibility. One of the things you can do under the HOME program if the municipality or the consortium of municipalities wants to is to do a homeownership program.”