I believe the Congress should act as called for by the President, as proposed under this existing legislation.

I appreciate the opportunity to offer remarks on behalf of the Mortgage Bankers Association at this hearing.

But we always hear, I hear many of my colleagues here in speech after speech talk about small businesses and mid-sized businesses being the backbone of America, the job creators, the ones that are going to help us lead the way into greater…

We have got to make sure that small and mid-sized business moves into this export market.

Whenever we can do that, I think that when you can take even admittedly, as Dr. Sanders would suggest, a relatively small program but leverage it to $1.6 billion, that is a good place to be.

I think that the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative builds on the bipartisan success of the HOPE VI programs

Choice builds on HOPE VI by recognizing that the problem of high concentrations of distressed housing... is not limited solely to public housing.

And in your examples of successful leveraging or investments under the Choice Neighborhoods program created a ripple effect, would those have taken place but for Choice Neighborhoods, the likelihood of that?

HOPE VI changed the face of public housing in America, but in many neighborhoods that is simply not enough.

I remain concerned about the negative effects on the physical state of public housing throughout the country during a time of declining Federal and State budgets for housing assistance.

Invite me to your next Choice Neighborhoods planning session so that I can share your process.

Which then brings me to my final set of questions. In HUD's experience, what has been the local demand for programs like Choice Neighborhoods?