Edolphus Towns: “every day my constituents remind me of the difficulty they have with making ends meet. And while $50 may not be much to…”

“every day my constituents remind me of the difficulty they have with making ends meet. And while $50 may not be much to you, but it is a lot for many of my constituents living in public housing. It has been estimated that 5.3 million low-income households are either spending more than half their incomes on rent or living in extremely substandard housing. This figure is expected to dramatically increase if the Velazquez amendment is not accepted. I understand that the rent increase is intended to encourage personal responsibility. But I wish someone would tell me how a 70-year-old senior citizen or a 73-year-old Air Force veteran is going to be taught personal responsibility. I believe they know what responsibility is and many of them have lived and survived in situations that many of us could not imagine living through. This bill presupposes that the average public housing resident has extra money for rent. We are talking about people who have been displaced from their jobs, who have been homeless, who are single parents with young children and cannot afford child care and therefore cannot work a minimum wage job. People who are disabled, perhaps on dialysis, or who have suffered a stroke, simply cannot afford to pay higher rent. We are talking about truly needy families who do not want to be in the situation in which they find themselves in. While I understand compassion is something this Congress is often not able to express.…”