Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007

TRANSPORTATION, TREASURY, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, THE JUDICIARY, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, the explanation of this amendment that we just heard is exactly upside down. Exactly wrong and backwards.

The fact is that our amendment would ensure that the level of housing assistance is maintained at the same level as previously; that it is not automatically reduced when public housing buildings are demolished or sold. It continues the same number of affordable housing units as previously.

Every year we demolish several thousand units. Until January of this year, the policy always was if you demolish 100 units, there are 100 section 8 vouchers issued, so the number of affordable units in the community does not go down.

In January, HUD put out a new regulation which said that we will replace the units under lease with new vouchers so that if 100 units are demolished but 10 of them were not occupied at that moment because people were moving in and out, they would only replace 90 vouchers. In other words, the number of affordable units would go down.

The policy we have always had which this amendment seeks to continue, not to change, is that when you demolish public housing, you maintain the same number of units by issuing the same number of vouchers, not less, not more. Contrary to what the distinguished chairman said, this would not increase the number of vouchers issued, this would maintain it at the same level as we always have had; one-for-one replacement for all of the low-income housing demolished.

The administration seeks to change that policy, first by HUD regulation last January that said we will only replace those actually occupied at that moment. So if 5 percent of the units are under repair or 5 percent of the units have people moving in and out, there is always some churning, we won't replace those. So the number will go down every time we do this. That is pernicious. It means, as the gentleman from Massachusetts said, that if you want to demolish an overconcentrated housing or you want to privatize an existing section 8 building, what will replace it will be fewer units of subsidized housing.

In the bill before us, the distinguished committee violated the rules of the House because they seek to take this policy initiated by HUD by regulation in January and by adding the words ``under lease'' to the bill, they would say in a broader perspective, in a broader universe than covered by the regulation, we would only replace occupied units.

The Rules Committee said points of order against the bill are waived so we could not raise a point of order against legislating on an appropriations bill. An amendment to take out those words would itself be legislating on an appropriation bill, so it's a one-way racket. The committee can get away with it but we can't unlegislate from the floor.

So this amendment is narrower. It, unfortunately, doesn't prevent the committee from doing what it is doing, which changes the number of units we are replacing to a fraction of those being demolished in some of the housing; but for the public housing at least, which the bill doesn't do but the regulation did, where the regulation said from now on we will only replace occupied units, not the total number of units, this amendment says no funds appropriated shall be used to enforce that regulation. That we can do.

So the CBO scores this amendment as costing zero dollars. All it says is we can't use funds to implement that regulation. It doesn't change the amount of money appropriated for section 8 by a nickel.

What it does say is we will not countenance a change by the department so that the previous policy, which we want to maintain, is if you demolish public housing, you demolish 100 units, you have to have 100 units to replace it, so the total amount of low-income housing in the community is not going down.

They want to replace that by saying they will only replace the units occupied at that moment. So the normal churning effect, people moving in, people moving out, would demolish the number of units replaced.

So this amendment would keep the existing system, the system that has existed for the last few decades, one-for-one replacement, and it is scored by CBO as costing nothing. I would urge the House to adopt this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, spurious statistics don't help us get anywhere. The fact is, yes, section 8 is a higher percentage of the HUD budget because this Congress has cut down other programs. We have cut down CDBG by $500 million. So what does that prove?

And the fact is that all this amendment seeks to do is to say not that more people should get more section 8 vouchers; I wish we could do that, and not that more people should get affordable housing, but simply to maintain our previous policy, that if you are demolishing low income housing you replace it with the same number of units. QED. And if the administration is so incompetent that we are wasting a lot of money because we are not administering the program properly, there is money slipping through its fingers because they are not administering the section 8 program properly, let them clean up their act. But the fact is the number of units should remain the same or go up.

This amendment says, and the gentlewoman says we are all in agreement, that as many people as possible should be helped. Well, if as many people as possible should be helped, at least let's agree, and this amendment is the only way to do that, not to cut down the number of section 8 units, not to cut down the number of units available whenever we demolish existing housing. That is all this amendment does. Nothing else. And anybody who says that this amendment increases the availability of housing above the policy of one for one is not telling the truth.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I must correct the gentleman. That is not what it does at all. There are always, in any housing stock, there are always some vacant units because someone moves out on Monday, it takes a month to prepare the apartment for someone else to move in. It has always been the policy that you replace the number of units that you are tearing down. If you are tearing down 1,000 units, you get 1,000 section 8 vouchers. If you change the policy, such as HUD is now seeking to do, such as the bill is seeking to do and which this amendment opposes doing, then you are saying that if 10 percent are vacant because someone has moved out and someone else hasn't moved in yet, they are cleaning it up, that you replace 90 percent instead of the 100 percent.

All this says is continue the policy we have always had of replacing units, not units occupied, because units occupied is always 80, 90 percent of total units because there are always people moving in and out. Someone died last week and so forth. There is no housing stock on earth 100 percent occupied 100 percent of the time. And if you look at 5 percent or 10 percent that are unoccupied now because three people died and five people moved and no one has moved in again, you are reducing the number of units. And all we are saying is don't do that. If you tear down low income housing, replace it one for one on the basis of the number of units. That has always been our policy. That has always been the law and all this amendment seeks to do is to keep it that way and not change it as the bill would do.

I yield back.

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