Frank Melville Supportive Housing Investment Act of 2008

Floor Speech

FRANK MELVILLE SUPPORTIVE HOUSING INVESTMENT ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 17, 2008)

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Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Chamber for its indulgence in allowing us to bring before it today the Frank Melville Supportive Housing Investment Act of 2008, which is a reauthorization and improvement upon the existing section 811 supportive housing statute.

Before I go into very briefly the details and importance of this act, I would just like to thank those that have worked on this bill and this issue, including the chairman of the committee, Chairman Frank, the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Housing, Representative Waters, and especially the Republican cosponsor of this legislation, along with myself, Representative Biggert, who has been just a boundless champion for the issue of supportive housing, the issue of compassionate care for those individuals with physical and mental disabilities, and also to Mrs. Capito, who has led this committee and this issue so ably.

Mr. Speaker, the 811 program today is the Nation's primary program for funding supportive housing. What is supportive housing? Supportive housing is housing for people with largely mental disability or physical disability, that provides some basic supports around those living arrangements so that those individuals can live independently. Job skills, medication adherence, social work, a small amount of support given to these individuals living with these disabilities can make sure that those individuals can live on their own independently and live full and productive lives. It is a cost-effective and compassionate program that, unfortunately, has not worked as well as it should have in the past several years.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates, Mr. Speaker, that 1.3 million individuals, non-elderly disabled across this country, are low income, living in substandard housing; 1.3 million people, and our 811 program simply hasn't reached enough of them.

Last year, less than 1,000 new units were built around this country with 811 dollars, and, as we heard before the subcommittee, it has taken sometimes 6 years for projects funded with 811 capital dollars to go from the development stage to the completion stage.

That's an unacceptably long amount of time for projects that sometimes only encompass four or six or eight units of housing. This bill sets a, I think, very aggressive but reasonable goal, a tripling over time the number of units constructed in this country with 811 dollars.

How does it do this? Primarily it does this by taking the $87 million right now that are used as vouchers in the 811 program, and transferring those vouchers over to the larger section 8 program. What we have learned is that these vouchers that are supposed to be dedicated to people with disabilities have not been traced sufficiently, and in fact, probably are going to people without disabilities, in many cases.

The section 8 program will do, I think, a much better job, is much better equipped to track those vouchers going forward. We then take that money that has now been freed up through the transition of those vouchers to the section 8 program and use much of it to fund a new demonstration program that will seek to leverage the capital dollars from coming from the 811 program with low-income tax credits, private dollars and State partnerships.

By doing that, we will be able to take existing, affordable housing projects that are in the planning stages and, with small amounts of rental subsidies, be able to reach out to those developers and essentially make them a deal that we will give them a small rental subsidy if, in exchange, they carve out a small number of units to be supportive housing. This has worked remarkably well in States that have endeavored this program already. North Carolina comes to mind most immediately where, over the last 7 years, 1,200 units of supportive housing have been built, in part, with this strategy put in place.

There are a number of other important improvements to the 811 program in this act, allowing States and State housing agencies to do much of the bureaucratic paperwork involved in these applications, which we believe will greatly expedite the application process, a study which will look into how we can better use dollars in existing housing projects, 202 housing projects, and other affordable housing projects, to get tenants that are living in other affordable housing sites, some basic support services that will help them live independently. It is a vast improvement over the current law, and we hope, as I said, it will potentially triple the number of units built across this country.

This is important. These are some of the country's most vulnerable citizens, who are playing by the rules, doing everything we ask, but simply need a small apartment of help to be able to live independent, productive lives in their community. This is one of the most compassionate things that this Congress can do is to try to extend out that basic building block of society, good, affordable housing to individuals with mental disability, with mental illness and with physical disabilities.

One last note, this bill is entitled the Frank Melville Supportive Housing Investment Act, and it is titled after the late Frank Melville, the founder, along with his wife, Ellen, of the Melville Charitable Trust. This charitable trust that they have built up through their generosity, the Melville family's generosity, has funded housing advocacy and specifically supportive housing advocacy across this country for a number of years. We would not have the housing advocacy community that exists today if it weren't for the generosity of the Melvilles.

Unfortunately, this world lost Frank Melville, who also happened to be a constituent of mine, recently, and this act, I think, is a very appropriate testament to the work that he has done.

I thank, again, Mrs. Biggert for her great work over the years on this issue.

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