John W. Olver: “I want to congratulate first Chairman Frank and Subcommittee Chairwoman Waters, both from the Financial Services…”

“I want to congratulate first Chairman Frank and Subcommittee Chairwoman Waters, both from the Financial Services Committee, for their great work in bringing forward to the floor this reauthorization bill for the important HOPE VI program. In America, we have at least 10 million American families who live below or near the poverty line who are struggling to make ends meet and working largely in minimum wage or near minimum wage jobs and part-time jobs. We appropriate voucher rental assistance for roughly 2 rac{1}{2} million of those families through the tenant and project basis, and they're costly. We also appropriate monies to provide operations for the roughly 600,000 units which are under our public housing authorities all over the country. The HOPE VI program is our only program that allows for total renovation of replacement of family housing units in that group that are under the public housing authorities in cities and towns all over the country.”