Melvin Watt: “I have been listening with some interest to the comments on this amendment, and I think there would be substantially…”

“I have been listening with some interest to the comments on this amendment, and I think there would be substantially more credibility for the people who are advancing it if there had actually been some units constructed or even started in the 17 or 18 months since Hurricane Katrina occurred. It is somewhat amazing to me how we have fought for so many years to do community development, and all of a sudden HUD and our colleagues here want to do community development, but they want to do it in this distress atmosphere where there is no housing, even for people to move back into who would participate and do work on the units. Here is what has happened. The hospitals that had damage to the first floors went back in and put patients on the second, third and fourth floors. The housing, the public housing that had damage to the first floors, the Public Housing Agency, which, by the way, is in receivership under HUD, not an independent local housing authority, but in receivership, being operated by HUD, took the position that it would be unsafe to put public housing tenants back in those units by restoring second, third, fourth floors of the housing units.”