Rick Lazio: “reclaiming my time, there is absolute local flexibility in terms of community work requirement. Any tenant and any…”

“reclaiming my time, there is absolute local flexibility in terms of community work requirement. Any tenant and any housing authority can choose any number of ways in which they can fulfill that requirement. This is basically about ensuring flexibility. This is putting your money where your mouth is. We have heard a lot of talk in this city about getting to mixed income, and when it comes down to the votes and doing something about it, people run and hide or they demagogue. In fact, do not take my word for it. Listen to the housing authorities, the people who are rolling up their sleeves, who are doing this hard work month after month, year after year. They are asking for this. Even the best-run housing authorities in the country are finding that they are getting swamped by the social services needs when we concentrate, super concentrate poverty in some of our Nation's communities. So we find the streets in Chicago with 4\1/2\ straight miles of public housing where virtually everybody is unemployed. What happens in that area? How many stores are in that area? How many banks are in that area? How many laundromats are in that area? There are none. I have been there, and the reason is that we have forced out the working poor that would support those basic services, that would help create the type of environment that we want for every American child.”