Paul Ryan: “I want to quickly address some of the inaccuracies dealing with the collegiate housing issue. The claim is the…”

“I want to quickly address some of the inaccuracies dealing with the collegiate housing issue. The claim is the collegiate housing issue only helps sororities and fraternities. Let me tell Members exactly what this does and does not do. Number one, for many of us who represent colleges and universities in our districts, we realize that there is an undersupply of off-campus housing and an overcrowding on campus in our Nation's colleges and universities. What this simply does is it allows off-campus housing be built by nonprofit organizations to address this need, to bring up to code, to fire code, off-campus housing because right now if you are going to invest tax-deductible dollars into a nonprofit, you can deduct those and invest them on campus for university housing; but you cannot take tax-deductible dollars to invest in building collegiate housing off campus even though they are nonprofit, not-for-profit foundations. So this goes well beyond sororities and fraternities. It goes to religious organizations, Hillel; it goes to nonprofits and fraternities and sororities, and only to university students who have academic careers, not to country clubs or anything else. It is tightly defined, and it puts the need where it is required and that is to address this critical shortage of bringing buildings up to code and addressing this housing shortage need.”