Vicente Gonzalez: “Mr. Chairman, I rise to state my strong unequivocal support for the Frank amendment. It is simple. It is fair. And it is…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise to state my strong unequivocal support for the Frank amendment. It is simple. It is fair. And it is a reasonable compromise to the provisions of H.R. 2. It protects many of the Nation's most vulnerable from excessive rents. The Frank amendment caps, it does not set, income based rents at 30 percent of income. It provides for rent reform with ceiling rents and income disallowances. It allows the public housing authorities the flexibility to establish flat rent subsidies and eliminate the disincentives to earn additional income, just as the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio] wants. And it requires the PHA's to establish market disciplines that are important to managing real estate and that rightfully are important to the chairman. It does not permit PHA's to charge public housing residents flat rents that are higher than 30 percent of their limited incomes, as the Lazio provisions would permit and, along with other provisions of the bill, would encourage. I believe that the provisions of H.R. 2 would tend to encourage flat rents set far higher than 30 percent of most of the public housing tenants' incomes, because the rents are to reflect market rents, not operating costs. The Frank approach would tend to encourage rents set that were affordable to the overwhelming majority of the public housing residents, those whose incomes are 30 percent of median income.”