Letter to Ben Carson, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development - Velázquez, Schumer Demand HUD Meeting on Puerto Rico

Letter

Dear Secretary Carson:

Some of us wrote to you last Tuesday, January 7th, demanding the immediate and urgent publication of a Federal Register Notice (FRN) detailing the administrative requirements for the disbursement of the $8.3 billion in Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) appropriated in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (PL 115-123). For days now, thousands of Puerto Rican families are sleeping and living in outside tents because they are too afraid to sleep inside their houses or unsecured refuges due to last week's 6.4 magnitude earthquake and the aftershocks that followed.

It has been more than two years since Hurricane Maria and Irma made landfall on the island. However, Puerto Rico has not been able to move forward with reconstruction of the island and provide adequate and secure housing for its residents because the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has illegally withheld the funds that Congress appropriated for these purposes.

Due to the new emergency at hand and the urgency of the situation, we are officially requesting an in-person meeting. It is your responsibility as Secretary of HUD to provide members of Congress an explanation as to why your Department has chosen to violate the law by withholding these critical resources. Puerto Ricans have waited too long. Members of Congress have given HUD more than enough time and HUD has disregarded the explicit deadlines established by law to publish the FRN. It is time we are provided with real answers and a definite date for the disbursement of the CDBG-DR funds for the island.

Congresswoman Velázquez will make the accommodations necessary to set up this meeting with the members. Please provide us with your availability to meet as soon as possible.

Sincerely,