John W. Olver: “The amendment that the gentleman from Georgia has now offered has to do with the Public Housing Capital Fund. The public…”

“The amendment that the gentleman from Georgia has now offered has to do with the Public Housing Capital Fund. The public housing infrastructure currently has an estimated $26 billion of maintenance backlog. In fact, capital repairs accumulate at the rate of something over $3 billion a year, which is considerably higher than $1.9 billion that is contained in this--$1.985 billion that's contained in this bill. So what we are doing is, year by year, continuing to provide maintenance funding: the replacement of utilities, the replacement of appliances, as well as such simple maintenance as painting if it's needed, and so on. {time} 1320 In our more than a million housing units, in the 3,500 or so of our total housing authorities around the country, we are steadily putting these in a situation where we're building a further capital maintenance backlog gap year by year by year. This is never a wise thing to do when it's at the extent that we are presently doing it. But the $110 million at least is a little bit better than not having the $110 million, which would be an even greater increase in the backlog gap that we have for maintenance, repair, and upgrading of our housing units. All of those housing units are intended to last for many years and be used long into the future. If we don't maintain them properly in a reasonable way, then eventually we will lose those units. It is much more expensive to replace the units with new units than it is to maintain them in a proper way.…”