On the recordOctober 21, 2021
I thank Madam Chair for yielding. Let me begin my comments by thanking the gentlewoman, as I have done in front of you and away from you, because I think you have placed housing on the front burner in this country right now, and it could not have come sooner. Let me just say that--because I was disoriented because of the earlier speakers and then got a really bad headache, but I am going to still be able to share these comments--I probably did not grow up like many of the people in a contemporary United States. I grew up in Texas just outside of downtown Dallas, and I had no idea that we were poor. {time} 1845 Never mind the fact that we had an outhouse about 30 or 40 yards down a hill by a little creek. Never mind the fact that we didn't have windows in our house. Actually, we did have windows, but my father or somebody had put tin over the windows to keep the winter cold out. The good blessing there was, in Texas, the weather is quite mild in the winter. But I lived in a shack, and there were six people in it. There were two rooms. My three sisters slept on one side of the room, and I slept on the other side of the room. The kitchen was not really a kitchen. We had what was called an icebox, and the iceman would bring a big block of ice every 2 or 3 days for 50 cents. So I guess somebody could say, well, his parents weren't working and that is what happens in this country when people don't work.…
