National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007

Floor Speech

NATIONAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING TRUST FUND ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - October 10, 2007)

Mrs. CAPITO. I would like to thank the ranking member for yielding me time, even though we happen to disagree on this issue. I would also like to thank the chairman for his dedication to affordable housing.

I rise today in support of the creation of the affordable housing trust fund. Many States and communities across the Nation have already created State housing trust funds.

My home State of West Virginia is one of those, and what we've seen in the creation of that West Virginia housing trust fund is the flexibility in the ability to target certain funds to certain projects, and it becomes a very workable and a very adaptable program.

The creation of a national trust fund will continue the good work of providing low-income folks with rental assistance, new construction, preservation of existing units, homeownership assistance and many other important programs.

This trust fund will provide State and local housing authorities with the funding and flexibility to best address the unique housing needs of their communities. Certainly the needs of communities in my home State of West Virginia are drastically different than those in the larger urban areas. For instance, in West Virginia we have a high homeownership, but we also have a definite question about the quality of the housing that people are living in and the rehabilitation of those homes is extremely important.

We also have an aging population where the different needs and different housing situations change, and I don't think we are addressing those needs, and I think this Federal housing trust fund could help with us with that.

So today I applaud this bill. I applaud the flexibility and adaptability in it, and I'm very much in favor of the ability that this trust fund is going to have to be able to adapt and create housing opportunities for those who need it.

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