Transcripts For CSPAN3 Housing Secretary Carson Testifies At Oversight Hearing 20171017

It will come to order. Without objection the chair is authorized to declare a ressz of the committee at any time. All members have five legislative days in which to submit extraneous materials to the chair for inclusion in the record. Entitled the future of housing in america. Over sight of the department of housing in urban development. I recognize myself for three and a half minutes to give an Opening Statement. We welcome the 17th secretary of the department of housing and urban development. Dr. Ben carson. For his first appearance before the committee. Welcome sir. In one respect he maybe among the most qualified individuals to ever serve as hud secretary. Why . Because secretary carson was raised by a single mother who had a third grade education. He grew up in poor communities in detroit and boston. Lived in multifamily housing with boarded up windows and doors. Surrounded by sirens. Gangs, and murder. Not only does he understand poverty personally, he understands what it takes to escape it. He is passionate about helping others escape as well. He also understands that huds approach to eliminating poverty in urban decay too often fails and thankfully hes committed to changing it. When it was created 52 years ago. It was intended to be the map weapon in the war on poverty. 52 years later, and 1. 6 trillion later the poverty rate remains unchanged. Sadly despite all the spending hud failed to live up to the noble aspiration of its birth. I do not wish to diminish the valuable work it does. Especially tenant based section 8 housing for the eld r ri and disabled. I remind all for the able bodied there is no better Affordable Housing program than a growing economy that creates better jobs, bigger paychecks sdp brighter tomorrow. After suffering from eight years of bad Public Policy leading to a sluggish economy, that has been growing at barely half of the historic norm, working americans deserve better. They deserve fundamental tax reform proposed by the president and republicans. A fair, flatter, simpler more competitive tax system. There hasnt been significant tax reform in a century that hasnt grown the economy and grown tax revenue. I remind all in the first five years after the kennedy tax reform plan was passed the economy grew by 48 . This growth erased a 5. Billion deficit ento a surplus. The economy grew 42 over five years and federal revenue surged by 28 . Even going back to the coolage era. Resulted in annual average Economic Growth of 4. 7 . So we have seen it time and time again. When we ruf the burden of excessive taxes and allow the American People to keep more of what they earn, we unleash the potential to create prosperity and opportunity for everyone. Thats not economic theory. Its history. And its the very em bodiment of Affordable Housing. I wonder, how can one be for Affordable Housing yet oppose allowing working americans to keep more of the paycheck . Thats exactly what the republican tax reform frame work does. Allows working americaning to keep more of their paycheck. I look fwad to hearing more of the secretaries new vision for hud. And the programs that he and his team are beginning to reform. I now yield to the rarnging member. For an Opening Statement. Thank you, mr. Chairman. America is currently in the middle of the worst housing crisis we have experienced. It is hitting the lowest income families the hardest. According to to National Low Income coalition, the United States has a shortage of 7. 2 milli 7. 2 million affordable rental units for low income households. Our country is at standstill. When it comes to reducing homelessness, and some parts of the country homelessness has reached crisis. We face homeowner ship challenges with minority homeowner ship rates continuing to lag. Even as the Housing Market recovers. In the face of the immense Housing Needs in our country, President Trump chose doctor ben carson to serve as the head of the department of housing and urban development. The secretary of hud is supposed to be at the forefront of our efforts to create strong communities. Expand, access to safe, decent and Affordable Housing. And enforce fair housing rights. Housing is the foundation on which the entire society is built. It is a platform for economic mobility and well being. It is a crucial part of the national economy. It is a necessary human right. We need strong leadership, and a bold vision for hud. And in order to expand access to Affordable Housing in the country. Unfortunately, i have seen nothing to indicate that secretary carson is up to the challenge. Secretary carson has expressed views that are deeply alarming and antithet kal to his role a nud. Such as describing poverty as quote more of a choice than anything else. And saying he doesnt think Public Housing should be too comfortable. His few actions so far as hud secretary are deeply troubling as well. Secretary carson has supported a budget that slashes funding for critical housing programs and proposes harmful rent increases on some of the most vulnerable American Families. Hes moved to roll back important Obama Administration policy. And initiative. With little or no explanation. So im very much looking forward to hearing from secretary carson today about his actions so far and his plans for serving our nations most vulnerable families. I thank you, and i yield back. Chair recognizes the gentleman from wisconsin. The chairman of the housing and insurance subcommittee. Thank you. Over here mr. Carson. Hi. Its hard to find people. Welcome, i dont know if its secretary or doctor. Welcome. Either way. Whatever the proper title is. I think you can tell youll be in for an interesting hearing. Based on the Opening Statement of the Ranking Member. I would note that poor people have been worse off over the last eight years. Mirpties have fared worse than the rest of the population. I would argue that with a growing bureaucracy a bigger government a. You got the middle class. Poor people get poorer. Rich people get richer. It happens when you implement the policies. And to go back to a system that gives people a hand up to move them from poverty like yourself into the middle class. One of the greatest Brain Surgeons the country has seen is the american droem. Im looking forward to your testimony. You have a lot of reform that you want to discuss with us. Im looking forward to hearing it. Id like to hear your vision on the prior secretary when they would look at success of hud. It was viewed in the realm of how many people do we get into the system . How many people do we help through hud . Versus the mentality of how many people do i get in, how many people can i move out of the system . How many people can i get to stand on their own two feet. Whats the measure of success. Look forward to your views on Housing Finance reform. The chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri. For one minute. Thank you. The future of housing in america strikes me as significant. Thank you for being here mr. Secretary. I have opening comments. But i maybe of greater value if i just tell you that i sat down with shack. To tell him how his fatherinlaw and i grew up. Two blocks apart. 405. He lived at 512 in the projects. I ended up getting the opportunity to move out faster than they did. We my father saved money. Bought a lot, bought a house. Moved the house to the lot. I mentioned to you. And i always think what would have happened if nobody helped my mother and father as they were struggling to make a living for four children . I end the story. Just to say that i have Three Sisters all with degrees. One with a phd. What happened if they ignored us . Housing is important to me. I yield back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from michigan. For one minute. Thank you. Im glad were having this hearing. Im glad youre here. The condition of americas cities and towns is a subject that is the jurisdiction of this committee and your department. In neither case for stoom to be fair to you, proceeding your entry into the position, that subject lant gotten nearly the attention that it should. Unfortunately for decades important investment in cities and towns. The home program, have faced really dope cuts. I grew up in flint. Just around the same time you were growing up in detroit. We had a similar childhood experience. In a lot of people know flint now because of the terrible crisis that its facing. Coming out of this poisoning of the water. The truth behind flints story is it was on the brink of insolvency because the state of michigan and the federal government had eliminated essential support for the development and redevelopment of the places. Im anxious to hear how you can square your suggestions to cut further those programs with the sworn oath you took to uphold the mission. Time has expired. Today we welcome the testimony of the honorable ben carson. This is the first time secretary carson has appeared before this committee. Dr. Ben carson was sworn in as ts 17th secretary of the u. S. Department of housing and urban development on march 2, 2017. Secretary carson earned bachelors degree from yale university. And received his md from the university of michigan medical school. Previously secretary carson served as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins center. Without objection the witnesses written statement will be made part of the record. Secretary carson you are recognized of paediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins childrens center. Without objection the witnesss written statement will be made part of the record. Youre recognized to give an oral presentation. It is on now. Ranking member waters, thank you for inviting me to discuss the work that we do at the department of housing and urban development. And my plans for fulfilling our mission with fidelity to our congressional mandate in the best interest of the American People. First, please know that right now hud is involved in the federal response to multiple hurricanes that devastated areas of texas, florida, georgia, puerto rico and the u. S. Virgin islands. Huds team is coordinating with our territorial and local Agency Partners providing Housing Solution for survivors and helping hud assisted clients and fha insured borrowers. It is the Recovery Efforts in these disaster impacted regions as they rebuild. Helping these communities is and will remain a priority for me and this administration. America has changed greatly since hud was established as part of Lyndon Johnsons Great Society programs half a century ago. We must learn to evolve with the country. Many Americans Still struggle to find Affordable Housing. Chronic homelessness continues to plague tens of thousands of our country men and many millions remain mired in poverty rather than being guided on a path out of it. History has made it clear that spending more dollars does not equal ensuring delivering services effectively and efficiently with the best practices and technologies since i arrived at hud in march it has been my mission to employ the wealth of knowledge held by career staff and remain careful stewards of taxpayer dollars. After several months of hard work, our team has outlined a bold plan for institutional reform and improvement that will better serve all americans. Its called the Forward Initiative. The policy elements of a Forward Initiative each fall under what we have named the three rs, reimagine how hud works, restore the American Dream and rethink American Communities. First reimagining how hud works refers to internal processes, working conditions and training. The goal of every improvement made at hud is to provide Better Service to those. Second, our job is to restored American Dream, getting americans back on their feet and permanently improving their lives. Of course hud is committed to continuing to serve those families that might always need someone to lean on. Additionally we have an opportunity to eliminate veterans homelessness in america. They sacrificed for our country and deserve all of the support we can give. And finally we need to rethink American Communities and how we can make them thrive. Expanding Community Investment through Public Private partnerships produces better results than heavyhanded government intervention. It is also our special priority to help more americans live in Healthy Homes free of lead hazards and other hazards. The hud team is cognizant. The president has directed federal agencies to take special care against burdening American Families and their businesses with unnecessary and expensive regulations. Hud is reviewing its existing regulations to assess their compliance costs, reduce Regulatory Burden and build a more efficient and effective agency. Let me close by reiterating the interest of our administration and my personal interest in working with this committee on Housing Finance reform. Hud will be an active participant in this critical dialogue because of our fundamental Housing Mission and because our fha Mortgage Insurance Program and our ginny may Mortgage Backed security guarantee. Large and vital components. Reform should be built on shared goals of ensuring a well functioning Housing Finance system that provides access for creditworthy bosch borrowers who are ready to own arrowers w ready to own a home. Expands the role of the private sector and reduces overall taxpayer exposure. Thank you for inviting me to testify today and i welcome any questions. Chair recognizes himself for five minutes for questions. My colleague, mr. Duffy, alluded in his Opening Statement to kind of metrics of success. And there are some who view the success of hud to be tied to the size of its budget or the number of people who have section 8 vouchers. But i am curious, does hud have or is hud developing any different metric . I mean, how many people actually get to escape poverty . How many ablebodied individuals are able to escape poverty to move beyond section 8 housing and maybe at one point enjoy the dream of Home Ownership . Does hud have any way to measure this . Are we looking at this wrong . Should there be a different metric of success for what youre doing . There have been a number of studies over the course of decades. And as was mentioned in your Opening Statement, there hasnt been a tremendous amount of progress there. This is not because the people who have been there have had bad intentions. I think they have very good intentions. But we do have to look at the fact that were not making a great deal with progress with poverty. And thats why we are looking to reform this whole thing. And really looking more at the person than at the housing complex. Housing is a component of developing people. We have to recognize that we only have 330 Million People in this country. We have to compete in the future with china and india, who have four times that many people. That means, if we dont develop all of our people, we are not going to be able to keep up in the future. Its as simple as that. We have to start thinking in terms of Holistic Development of people and communities. How do we enable people to climb that ladder of opportunity. How do we incentivize them to climb that ladder of opportunity so that they become part of the strength of this country. Part of Affordable Housing is obviously tied to our Housing Finance system. Recently Federal Reserve governor Jerome Powell said, if congress does not enact reforms over the next few years we are at risk of settling for the status quo, a government dominated Mortgage Market with insufficient private capital to protect taxpayers and insufficient competition to drive innovation. Do you agree or disagree with governor powells assessment . There is no question that we need to engage in a serious discussion about finance reform. A lot of progress has been made, by the way. Ten years ago we were talking about how important it is to get everybody into Home Ownership. And again, i am not criticizing the people who did that. But i dont think they realized that to put somebody in a home that they cant afford is not really doing them a favor. They lose the home. They lose their credit. They lose their future opportunities. We have to learn from those kinds of situations. And innovation is the hallmark of america. Mr. Secretary, can we reform our Housing Finance system without reforming fha, which is obviously under hud . Fha, as you probably know, the largest guarantor of mortgages in the world. So its an essential part of it and needs to be reformed as well. Well, historically the mission of fha was to support firsttime and lowincome lowtomoderate income families. And it had a small footprint in the market. Now it has a very large footprint in the market and, in many areas of the u. S. , the fha loan limits are the same as the conventional market, 636,150 in socalled highcost areas. At least where i come from, only the top wage earners can afford a mortgage of 636,000. Do you agree that establishing a home price or loan limit more in line, say, with the median home price in the area will better serve the target customer for fha and get it refocused on low to moderate income and firsttime home buyers . Thank you for that question. If one looks at the actual statistics and looks at the bell curve, you know, 95 of the mortgages fall in the 200,000 range. On the very tips there are going to be very low ones and very high ones. So i tend to want to focus on the large group and not on the outliers. Its very, very rare that we deal with a 636,000 mortgage. Thank you, mr. Secretary. I now recognize the Ranking Member for five minutes. Thank you very much. I had intended to start to talk about the housing crisis that we have, but since the president was busy tweeting this morning and you referred to huds role in dealing with the hurricane disasters and what you and the administration are doing, this morning trump threatened to abandon puerto rico Recovery Efforts. President trump served notice thursday that he may pull back federal relief workers from puerto rico effectively threatening to abandon the u. S. Territory amid a staggering humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of hurricane maria. In a trio of tweets, he wrote, we cannot keep fema, the military, and the First Responders who have been amazing in puerto rico forever. On thursday he sought to shame the territory for its own plight. He tweeted, electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricane. So you talked about what you, hud, is doing in cooperation with, i guess, the administration. Do you agree with the president . I certainly agree that puerto rico is a very important territory. The people from puerto rico have contributed greatly to the culture of america. I am not talking about that. What i am talking about is these tweets where the president threatened to abandon puerto rico Recovery Efforts. Do you agree that they should be abandoned, that puerto rico should be abandoned . Well, first of all, as i was saying, puerto rico is a very important part i want to know whether or not you agree with the president , who is threatening to abandon puerto rico Recovery Efforts. I think i just said i have no intention of abandoning puerto rico. They are a very important part of what we are. So you dont agree with the president. He tweeted, electric and all other infrastructure was a disaster before the hurricanes and sought to shame the territory for its own plight. Do you share that opinion . I think that our job is to make sure that we take care of the disaster that has occurred. So you dont agree that it should be abandoned. Is that right . Of course it should not be abandoned. And you dont think they should be shamed for their own plight. Is that right . There is no question that there have been a lot of difficulties in puerto rico. They ended up should they be shamed for its own plight . I dont think it i dont think it is beneficial to go around shaming people in general. Okay, so im glad to hear you dont agree with the president. Let me go on with my housing question. I want to talk about someone who i recently met by the name of larry, who resides in a section 202 housing for the elderly property in south los angeles. Larry shared with me the meticulous Monthly Budget he manages for himself. I have the budget right here. He lives on a fixed income of 1,015 per month. After paying for rent, utilities, groceries, medical expenses, personal hygiene, he has exactly 110 left at the end of the month. He told me he looks forward to using some of that 110 to take his granddaughter out for ice cream. The rent increases proposed in your recent hud budget would mean an 80 monthly increase for larry. Larry said to me in my office, congresswoman. I dont know which other corner i could cut if i had to pay an additional 80 per month in rent. In fact, i have data that shows that seniors would have to pay an additional 83 a month on average in rent under your rent reform proposal, which is a whopping 28 increase over what theyre currently paying. There are lowincome seniors in hud assisted housing all over this country like larry with average incomes just over 13,000 a year. Do you mean to tell me it is the vision of this administration to raise rents on low income seniors like larry . Tell me, what do you expect larry to do if your proposal to raise rent is enacted . If larry does not see a way out, he can apply for an exemption, which will be available to him. Having said that, we are changing programs in such a way as to create sustainability. We dont want to reach a point, you know, five years down the road where we have no ability to take care of anyone. Let me just say that i have heard you mention before that hardship exemptions will be available, but i do not accept that as an adequate solution because hardship exemptions have historically failed to actually help people who are eligible for an exemption and you have never even acknowledged this. So i ask you again, what do you expect larry and the tens of thousands of other seniors like larry to do in the face of such a dramatic rent increase . First of all, i think the situation that you just described is not a typical situation. I dont believe that elderly and disabled people will see that large of an increase. Thats not the numbers that i have received. Based on your cuts they will. Time. We would be very happy to have our people go over the numbers with you. Time. Time of the gentle lady expired. The chair recognizes the gentleman from wisconsin, mr. Duffy, chairman of the housing and insurance subcommittee. I wanted to deviate from my original questions and note that the president was somewhat accurate in that the electrical grid in puerto rico was not up to what it should have been. Theyre highly in debt. There is a lot of problems in puerto rico that they were dealing with before maria hit them. I love the island. I am part of the puerto rican caucus. But to now try to say that President Trump is shaming people on the island. If i am not mistaken it was President Trump who sent over a request for a supplemental package to the tune of 36 billion. It came from the white house. Yes. I can tell you from being in many conversations with the president and other members of the cabinet, he is in no way thinking about abandoning them. He has put a lot of effort into that. Speaking to that point, i think it was president obama who did a flyby stop in in puerto rico but then went and spent days in cuba hanging out with a ruthless dictator, going to see baseball games, hands in the air, open up tourism in cuba to the exclusion of tourism in puerto rico. We should first go, lets promote american citizens in puerto rico and dollars flowing there instead of to the dictatorship. Cuba. I am off my questions, but i had to respond to the Ranking Members i think inaccurate characterization of what President Trump has done on behalf of the good people of puerto rico. I want to pivot, and i dont have a lot of time. Can you talk about when you look at hud, when you look at the tax dollars that flow through your agency, what are you doing to be more efficient to stretch those dollars further and help more people but also be responsive to the taxpayers who send you money . What are you doing on those ends . I take responsibility of the taxpayers very seriously. And we have put in place a team that understands that seriousness. We have hired a coo, a cio, and a cfo. Hopefully we will get through very soon. Its been named. So that we can begin to look at things from the 30,000 point of view. 30,000 foot point of view rather than just patching Little Things that dont seem to work, which has been the way things have been done in the past, running it really more like a business, assigning responsibilities to people in all of the different areas so that you dont pass the buck to someone else. Refreshing. I think i heard the Ranking Member mention this, that people shouldnt be too comfortable in Public Housing. I think she was quoting you. What do you mean by that . I thank you for giving me an opportunity to clarify that. We were in a transitional housing setting, and they were getting people out three times to four times faster than other transitional housing. And i wanted to know how they were doing that. It was because they were concentrating their efforts and their resources on getting people into permanent housing. And i said thats a very good idea. There was a New York Times reporter there who sort of misinterpreted that, or actually she did a better job, but her editors reinterpreted that to say that carson thinks they shouldnt be comfortable. What a bunch of crap that is. Thank you for that. Listen, i dont i know that poverty is not comfortable. And i know that you know that as well as someone who lived that firsthand, especially growing up. But when we talk about being trying to make people comfortable in poverty, as opposed to trying to incent people to get out of poverty and get into the middle class, if you look at your own Life Experience, would you be better off if you and your mother and your family had been made comfortable to stay where you were in Public Housing and in poverty or to incentivize you to become the great doctor and now secretary that you are . Well, i can tell you that, at the time when my mother was pushing us, i would have preferred somebody make me comfortable there. I didnt want her to make me read these reports and give her all these reports. In retrospect, you know, by reading, particularly about successful people in all endeavors, i began to realize what is necessary. And to realize that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. What we have to do is help more people to not only recognize that but to give them the means whereby they can take advantage of the opportunities that exist in our society. I dont have much time. We talked about this in the past, but i want to make this note. I am concerned in Rural America how programs impact lowincome Homeless People in Rural America as opposed to urban america where there are better structures and more money flows. But poverty in Rural America is just as dangerous and treacherous and sad as in urban america, and making sure there is some equity between the two. I look forward in working with you about addressing these issues in Rural America. Time of the gentleman expired. The chair now recognizes gentleman from new york, mr. Meeks. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Secretary. Good to see you. You too. Let me first just say that Puerto Rico Needs all the help that it can get. We need to make sure that were doing what we need to do. I would also say that the u. S. Virgin islands, because i didnt hear you mention about the u. S. Virgin islands, i did not hear you mention about. They are american citizens and we need to do all we can to ensure the conditions theyre in, due to no fault of their own with the natural disaster, that hud does what it can to make sure that these individuals get back on their feet. Agreed. Now, our life story is somewhat similar. I grew up in Public Housing. Which is very important to me. And the opportunity to move on, it was great in the sense that there was, you know, looking for Home Ownership. And i know i think that you said during your testimony that there has not been a tremendous amount of progress at relieving poverty with housing programs. I can tell you that, if it wasnt for housing programs, i probably would still be in poverty. And i could name friend after friend after friend who grew up in the same Public Housing development that i did who no longer lives there, who would be in poverty if it wasnt for a housing program, a decent place to live over their heads, et cetera, which is huds mission. And when you look at the fact that individuals that were preyed upon because i know that you also believe, as i do, that the goal is Home Ownership, for those individuals, many of them who live in Public Housing, who thrive to live, aspire to live in a home and own a home, they were the ones who were victimized by exotic mortgages. They were targets, et cetera. And now they are forced back into rent to renting their apartments and homes and need housing programs so that they can continue to have a roof over their head so that they can get out of poverty. And one of the pieces that i am concerned about that we have at hud now is the stressed asset Stabilization Program where it seems as though were selling homes to private equity firms who has no interest in making sure that we stress Home Ownership and make sure that individuals stay in their homes, its just about the dollar. So i was wondering, what is your vision for the Program Going forward . Do you expect the program to continue . Okay. First of all, Public Housing is important. And assisted housing is important. The point was that even though its important, we need to be looking at ways that we can reform it so that we can make more progress in terms of getting people out of poverty. Definitely i dont want to get rid of it. As far as the program is concerned, we have to, again, be cognizant of our responsibility to taxpayers and that means not taking on and keeping a lot of properties that require a lot of taxpayer money. If we can find ways to dispose of those properties, absolutely want to do it. But we have written into the regulations a requirement that people who are in those houses cannot be expelled from them for several months. So we try to give people appropriate time to be able to get out. Let me ask does the dash Program Target local municipalities and nonprofits in buying the bulk homes, because i know they have the interest of putting people keeping people in the homes. If that program was designed so that local municipalities, who have a vested interest in this, and notforprofits, it would be something that would encourage the same thing youre talking about, keeping Home Ownership. I agree with you. And i know that the former mayor here in d. C. Has been working on that kind of issue. And we would be happy to work with you. I think our goal is obviously to get that property into the hands of private citizens if we can do that. I have 11 seconds and i want to get this in. I think its tremendously difficult also if you look at the Public Housing stock in my district, for example, 1. 1 million families living in Public Housing. If you cut all the money that goes into repairing those homes, they need rules, to get rid of the walls that are mildewed, there is no way to repair them if you dont have the money to reinvest in them. Just as in a home. Time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from new mexico, mr. Pearce. Chairman of the terrorism and illicit finance subcommittee. Thank you. Appreciate your being here today, sir. Appreciate the work that you are doing. Thank you. Recently the new mexico delegation sent you a letter about the vacancy in the albuquerque hud office. Are you making any progress on finding someone to fill that position . Yes. We are making Good Progress on that. You should be hearing something soon. I appreciate that. I visited with you before about native american housing. Its native americans are sometimes located in some of the deepest poverty areas in the country. I watched five families, maybe not the same circumstances of yours, work our way up through out of poverty one small house at a time. So i am pretty passionate about the native american housing. Just this last week i visited two of the, i guess, really good examples of what tribes can do to provide housing. I have invited you in the past. I would like to reextend that invitation to come visit to see what tribes are doing to build houses for their own citizens and extending their mortgage rules to where banks in some cases are financing the houses on indian reservation, which has not happened much in the past. I think its very innovative. When you talk, then, in the broader case about your Forward Initiatives and the restore, these are things that i can identify as having worked in our life. I hear your story about how theyve worked in your life, and so i really appreciate you bringing your world experience and implementing it into a format that hopefully others can reach. Tell me a little bit about the Public Private partnership that you visualize and some of the community initiatives. First of all, thank you for the work that youve done with the native american community. I had an opportunity recently to go out to montana and visit with some of the tribes there as well as a multitribal council and visit with some of the young people there and look at some ideas for really moving that along and with the help of congress the one reservation will be revamped soon. As far as the Public Partnerships around the country, they have been amazing. Its the new way we do things as hud. Rather than riding in with a big bucket of money and saying, build this place for these people, you know, getting the local private sector involved in a way that they actually have significant investment so that the success and maintenance of the neighborhood is incumbent upon its incumbent upon them to maintain their financial benefit. So and thats the way it should be. Winwin situations all along. The other thing about some of these Public Private partnerships, instead of just building a house or putting a roof on, theyre trying to build communities. Because you need a variety of Different Things in order to create a healthy community. In any part of the country. You know, hopefully later on i will have an opportunity to talk a little bit about the enVision Centers that we are working on, hopefully will be opening the first one in a couple of months that will really add a lot to complete communities. Thank you, sir. Being a veteran myself, i noted that you said that you were concentrating on eliminating veteran homelessness. Can you give me a little bit more specifics on whats going on in that program. Yeah. Over the last relatively short period homelessness for veterans has decreased by 47 and is still going down. We are working with the Veterans Administration as well as across multiple agencies because i believe thats something we can completely eliminate. The hud vash program has been very successful. We had extra vouchers left over last year. One of the things that will be helpful to us working with your committee is having less restrictions on how we can distribute those vouchers. Because there are some places where there is absolutely no one who needs them and other places where they do need them, and we need the flexibility to be able to transfer them to the appropriate places. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, i see my time has expired. I yield back. Gentleman recognizes the chairman from massachusetts mr. Capuano. Thank you. I would yield my time to the Ranking Member, ms. Waters. Thank you very much, mr. Capuano. I have serious concerns about the potential conflicts of interest with regard to hud funds that are contributing to the pockets of multifamily developments owned in part by the president and his soninlaw jared kushner. Do you think its appropriate that the president and his family are profiting from federal government funding intended to support lowincome families . If you can give me specific examples, i can address that question. Well, i want to know if you think its appropriate that the president and his family are profiting from any federal government funding intended to support lowincome families. I dont think its appropriate for Public Officials in general to do that. Okay. Do you stand by the president s decision not to divest himself of his interest in property that receive hud funding . I think the best thing to do is tell me specifically what you are talking about, and then i can address it. What have you done to ensure that hud is properly handling these unprecedented conflicts of interest . Again, if you can tell me what the specific thing is, i can address it. These properties that are owned in part by the president for mr. Kushner are also reportedly in very bad condition. You know starrett city. Yes. Which is part owned by the president. You do know that. I do know that he has a small part ownership it has increasingly declining hud inspection scores. You know that. Do i know what . That it has increasingly declining hud inspection scores. I know that there are problems there, yes. But specifically do you know that it is a problem, that they have received increasingly declining hud inspection scores. Do you know that . I know what is necessary to know as the secretary of hud regarding that. Do i know all the numbers about no, i dont want you to know all the numbers. All i want you to know is about starrett. Everybody kind of knows a lot about star et, and its partially owned by the president. You are the hud secretary, and you are in a conflict of interest situation. And i just want to make sure you understand what you are overseeing. Do you know that they have declining hud inspection scores . I know that theyve been having difficulty. Okay. So you know that. That they have not passed inspection. What are you doing to ensure that these hud residents are not suffering as a result of poor management and lack of investment by its profitmotivated owners . Well, of course we oversee the phas that are involved with that. And work with them. As we do with the ones all around the country. We have learned that the owners of starrett city, the biggest project based section 8 contract in the country of which trump is part owner are planning to sell the property. The sale is also rife with controversy as infighting between the ownership is playing out in public. To date we have no knowledge of how hud approves the transfer of section 8 contracts when a property is not fha insured or hudheld as starrett city is because hud has not published its process. Hud has the ability here to insist upon things like Robust Tenant protections and longer affordability requirements, but the process is frankly unknown. Have you gotten involved with this . Its a big issue. We have a very well formulated group that deals with these kinds of issues. And they will deal with this one in the same way that they deal with all such issues. There wont be anything thats done differently here. They have not scekept you appraised of what they are doing . Excuse me . Are you satisfied with the progress that theyre making . They will handle this as they have handled all things. So you dont know they have not kept you appraised. You dont know whether or not the process is working. So, i would like a full accounting of the process that your department is planning to employ, including all decision points and who will make them should this process move forward, and so i want you to commit to that because, again, this is a big project thats owned partially by the president of the United States. And i want to know how this sale is going to work, what kind of protection these tenants are going to have. And you should keep yourself appraised of it because i am going to want to know, as others will want to know, how it is progressing. Well be happy to work with you and your staff to disseminate that information. Time of the gentle lady expired. The chair recognizes the gentle lady from missouri, miss wagner. Chairman of our oversight and investigation subcommittee. Thank you, chairman hensarling and thank you, secretary carson, for your testimony this morning. For being here. Welcome. We know that you have been on the job for just a brief five or six months. Were glad to have you in front of the committee for the first time. As you know the Community Development block grant program. Cdbg, is huds Third Largest program. But what is often forgotten is that the cdbg Disaster Relief program, which is designed to help communities and neighborhoods recover from costly disasters, while the committee has long been concerned by the previous administrations misuse of Community Development block grant Disaster Relief funds, it is important to note that congress recently provided the program with 7. 4 billion in funding. Understanding, again, that you have only been with hud since march, and this is the first Disaster Relief effort you have been involved in, are you aware, mr. Secretary, of some of the problems, some of the concerns of the program, especially regarding prior misuse of funds and what importance do you place on making sure these programs go to the americans who need them most . First, thank you for that question. Its very important to point out that cdbg and cdbgdr are different programs. Correct. Cdbgdr has been very important in disaster situations like the ones that we have recently seen. There are very good things that have been done through the program, and there are some things that perhaps are quite questionable that have been done. It doesnt mean that we are not recognizing the things that are good that have been done and the things that need to be done in terms of infrastructure and redevelopment and development of communities. Those things will continue to be done, without question. So, you know, i am not questioning the things that have been effective and that have worked. We are questioning the things that have wasted taxpayers money. And we have a way of reforming those things. Wonderful. I am glad to hear that. Mr. Secretary, as the chairman of the oversight and Investigations Committee here on financial services, were going to be looking into the program, and even a potential upcoming hearing. And i just ask for your commitment and cooperation to work with this committee on finding those various solutions that will improve effectiveness, efficiency and probably, most importantly, taxpayer accountability regarding the Community Development block grant Disaster Relief program. There are ways i think for rules putting rules for the program in statute, limiting putting limits on money, deadlines, perhaps recapturing of funds and even just perhaps better tracking of funds. I hope you will be willing to work with us. All of those things will be done, and thats why we put together a more businesslike approach and well very much be looking forward to working with you on that. I appreciate it. Staying with that theme, i wanted to go back to something you said in your testimony, and i quote, while pursuing its mission to provide safe, decent and Affordable Housing for the American People the hud team is also cognizant of its vital duty to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and, like medical dictum, i love this the best. To first do no harm. Having spent 1. 6 trillion in taxpayer funds since its creation in 1965, is hud this is a broad question. Is hud making life better for American Cities and other communities . A lot of good things have been done. There is no question. I dont want to disparage the efforts that people have put into this. But i see all of the things that have been done before as stepping stones to help us to get to where we want to be. And i have a tendency not to spend a lot of time disparaging people. I appreciate that. I am interested to know how hud, how you what your perspective is on measuring success. Beyond the number of programs it serves or creates or the amount of money spent. I think success for us will be not the number of people we get into these programs but how many people we get out of it. How many people actually climb that ladder of success and become selfsufficient. Thats what our programs are all going to be aimed at. Mr. Secretary, i find your approach refreshing and uplifting. I thank you for your testimony here today. Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Time of the gentle lady expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from georgia, mr. Scott. Yes, mr. Secretary carson. Tell me, why do you think President Trump asked you to be secretary of hud . Probably because, before i endorsed him, we spent a lot of time talking about what was happening, particularly in some of our disadvantaged communities and how we really needed to recognize that, if we are going to succeed as a nation, all of those people have to succeed as well. Well, let me ask you this. It seems to me that i believe that the president put you there to give cover to cutting and eliminating the cbdg program. Let me tell you why. First of all, this is this is the crucible of the whole argument. You should be at the forefront of telling the great story of success of the cbdg program. The fact that it has created and retained 386,000 jobs for low and moderate income people. The cbdg program has benefited 42 million low and moderate income persons through public improvements, including senior citizens, child care centers, centers for people with disabilities, veterans, veterans with disabilities. Its benefited 133 million low moderate income persons through public service, like employment training. The funds are being used to assist credit worthy working families with down payments and Closing Costs assistance on their homes. You should be out here shouting the success of this program. But rather, i believe that the president has you there to give cover to cutting this program and eliminating it. Here is what you told the New York Times, mr. Carson. When this issue was brought up. In july of this year, you said, i know that the cbdg have been called out for elimination. You said that. I know that the cdbg program has been called out for elimination. Was it President Trump that called that out . Who else could . My impression is that, what the president is really saying is that there are problems. Oh, and you said this. I think it was someone on his staff who kind of said, well, maybe we should just get rid of the whole cbdg program. Well, i am here to tell you, mr. Secretary, i am not going to let you do that. And i believe we have enough democrats and republicans, because this is a Bipartisan Program that is doing well, and you would do well, mr. Secretary, to stand up and fight back in this administration. It needs help when it comes down to dealing with hurting americans. And you are in this position, being secretary, not just because of what you said, well, even if we cut these funds, i believe that the American People are a compassionate people. Mr. Secretary, you should know better than anyone that compassion alone wont do it. It wasnt compassion alone that got you sitting where you are right now. Somebody had to give you and your family and others a financial helping hand. We need you to speak up and fight back in this administration. Talk that talk. The time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from missouri mr. Luetkemeyer. Welcome. Last year president obama signed into law the housing opportunity through modernization act of 2016. Legislation i introduced with my friend and colleague from missouri, mr. Cleaver. Who is here this morning. Part of it required fha to streamline rules applying to condominiums. The Department Published a proposed rule and for timing sense, can you give us a sense of timing on the final rule, when you anticipate it coming out and being finalized. There were like 28 different sections that had to be satisfied, threequarters of which have been satisfied, so we are coming down the home stretch on that. Its very important because condominium purchase is frequently the first step into Home Ownership. And Home Ownership is vitally important part of the economy of our nation. And wealth accumulation is the primary source of wealth accumulation. The average home owner has an accumulated wealth of 200,000. The average renter accumulated wealth of 5,000. Its a big issue. And one of the reasons that i am looking for ways to get a lot of the people who are relatively complacent with renting to be homeowners, but we have to do it in a responsible way. Appreciate the comment. Last month the Congressional Budget Office released a report entitled options to manage fhas exposure to risk from guaranteeing singlefamily mortgages. The purpose was to provide policy options designed to further the true mission of fha while also improving the agencys financial position. I assume your staff has read that report. Yes, they have. And are you aware of it . I weve had some discussions. Okay. Of the provisions that are in there, are you looking at implementing some of those . Are you able to talk about some of it yet that you have plans on . Or are you still reviewing the report . Those are things that obviously wed be very happy to work with you. And i am looking forward to having an fha commissioner involved in those discussions as well. You have any idea when that individual will be appointed . I am hoping very shortly. Its been quite an ordeal. Getting people in place. Understand. As housing costs continue to grow and income for many low income families remain stagnant, what innovative programs is this administration considering to provide access to housing . Well, as you probably know right now, were only able to provide about one in four or one in three people with Affordable Housing who are looking for it. We have extensive waiting lists. And one of the things that is really helping to cut down on the backlog of people are some of these Public Private partnerships, particularly through the r. A. D. Programs that have taken these places that have big backlogs of Capital Improvements that need to be made and, by partnering with the private sector and through litech and things of that nature creating vast numbers of affordable units. I was in florida, in miami, recently, liberty square, where theyre demolishing 700 units and replacing them with 1600 units. Which are very nice and are complete neighborhoods. Those are the kinds of things that will help us to make progress and well make progress a lot faster than we did with the old model. I only have a minute left. I was curious. You talked about the Hurricane Relief that you are working on and providing some Housing Solutions. Can you elaborate more on that and explain. We have had three major storms here and had another storm hit last week. How is your agency providing relief and help for those folks . This is an unprecedented situation that has occurred with this level of hurricane activity so close one after another. We have been involved with each thing even before it hit. We had people on the ground, volunteers on the ground, assessing what the needs are, how many people do we have who have been displaced, how many units are there, you know. In puerto rico, for instance, you know, theres 203 multifamily units with over 2100 units. And the vast majority of those are assisted housing. Finding out what happened to those people, where are they located, and how can we get them most quickly back into things. The initial response is through fema, and we work very, very closely with them. We rely upon their numbers to help with the longterm recovery aspects of what we do. Thank you very much. My time expired. Time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. Sherman. Thank you. A lot of focus on the fha program, the Prior Administration was in the process of implementing a 25basis point reduction in the premium that would have saved the average borrower 500 in the first year and more in high cost areas like mine, a million homeowners would have benefited and they would have saved over 27 billion. In your confirmation of course, the before you were nominated, the administration halted that plan to reduce the premium by 25 basis points. During your confirmation, you agreed to look at that policy with the possibility of reinstituting that 25 basis points of decline. We also see that back until 2013, you stopped making premiums when you reached a loan to value ratio of 78 . You had 22 equity in the property, and at that point it was thought you did not need insurance, to make Insurance Premium payments. That was reversed in 2013. Are you moving toward perhaps reducing the Insurance Premium by 25 basis points, and are you examining going back to the policy of saying, once you have 22 equity, you dont have to make Premium Payments . Certainly both of those things are under study, being looked at very carefully. I personally dont want to make the commitment in terms of either one of them right now because were so close to having an fha commissioner. But do bear in mind that we want the prices of Home Ownership to be as low as possible while still protecting the taxpayers. And how will the recent reverse mortgage changes impact the mutual mortgage insurance fund, the fha insurance fund, and do you expect additional changes to the reverse Mortgage Program . When the reverse Mortgage Program was initiated it was done with very good intentions but without really looking down the pike, and people were taking out much larger amounts of their equity in the beginning than was sustainable. And this was leading to a lot more problems than it was helping. Its also resulted in a much higher default rate. And thats been a big drain on the mmif. So the changes that we have made will sort of stop the bleeding in terms of new mortgages or reverse mortgages. The ford Mortgage Program is doing well. Were draining from the reverse mortgage but putting into the fund for the other. Were very close to the 2 right now and we need to watch further before we i want to get into one other issue. Beyond your responsibilities for housing and urban development, you have other responsibilities under the constitution, along with other cabinet secretaries. Particularly section 4 of the 25th amendment. And we also live by this constitution. I the section 4 deals with the possibility that a president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Have you taken the time to get Legal Counsel to brief you on what your responsibility is as a cabinet secretary under the 25th amendment . I have not had an indepth discussions of that. I would urge you to do so. This amendment was written in the early 60s as a result of what we life that happens, whether its the dangers that a president faces, whether its the Health Problems a president can face. I would urge you first to get Legal Counsel, to know what your responsibilities are, and second, to discuss with other cabinet officers how you would implement a section 4 of the 25th amendment. I yield back. Okay. Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from kentucky, mr. Barr, Committee Chair of our Monetary Policy and trade subcommittee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Secretary, welcome to the committee. Thank you. Thank you for your service, not just as a Public Servant as secretary of the department, but also as a physician in private life and for helping so many children. And most of all for the example that you have set. That hard work, integrity, persistence, that those are values that are critical to escaping poverty. And thank you for expressing the viewpoint that many of us have that government dependency often undermines those values. As we have talked many times, my district in kentucky, unfortunately, has one of the highest opioid addiction rates in the country. Unfortunately, the commonwealth of kentucky suffers under the third highest Drug Overdose mortality rate in america. But the good news is that i have seen success of evidencebased transition housing programs including st. James place, recovery kentucky, revive, shepherds house. These are organizations that help individuals coming out of recovery and transition back into the workforce through job training, Financial Literacy and counseling services. Unfortunately, huds Housing First program has not been helpful. Individuals who come out of addiction and rehabilitation are placed in housing situations where their neighbors are i a abusing the very substances that they once abused themselves contributing to a cycle of addictions tearing apart our country and is costly to the american taxpayer. Has hud considered the need for supportive transitional housing programs as an alternative to the very counter productive Housing First program . Well, in the the homelessness is a big issue. And i think one that we as a nation actually have the opportunity to resolve. Housing first, i think, gets a bad name because people think were just getting people off the street and then were forgetting about them. And maybe some people have done it that way. We are not doing it that way now. We believe in Housing First, housing second and housing third. Housing first, you get them off the street, because you know, you leave them under the bridge for a year, theyre going to end up in an emergency room, frequently, end up getting admitted. A weeks admission costs as much as a year or more of housing. So that really doesnt help us very much. There are a lot of statistics i can give you in terms of how much they cost when you dont house them versus when you do. So you get them housed first. Secondly, you diagnose why they were in that condition. Thats critical. And then housing third. You fix it. So, you know, i dont think its appropriate just to get them off the street and forget about them and move on to the next project. Thank you, secretary, for that answer. I also appreciate your desire to see a greater flexibility in hud vash and seeing the success. St. James place, in my district. I invite you to see what theyre doing with hud vash. The flexibility youre requesting, we want to help you with that. Organizations like st. James place are using the hud vash program to great success, requiring work, requiring sobriety, helping these people not just measuring success by how many veterans theyre housing but how many veterans are leaving and graduating from the program. Again, i want to invite you to come see the good folks at st. James place, in lexington, kentucky. Dr. Carson, i introduced an amendment on the house floor last month to stop overreach by your department. That raimt amendment prohibited hud, as you can imagine, in rural kentucky, manufactured housing is a terrific Affordable Housing opportunity for many of my constituents. As the leader of hud, that regulates manufactured housing, can you undertake an effort to comprehensively review all of these regulations impacting manufactured housing and direct your team to utilize this information so that any new regulations do not have unintended cost consequences . Yes. We have a Regulatory Reform committee that has been formed at hud for just purposes like that. Thanks for that. And finally, while we all abhor discrimination, the Prior Administration enacted regulations that you described in a 2015 Washington Times oped as governmentengineered attempts to legislate racial equality that create consequences that can make matters worse. Is hud actively working to revise that 2013 rule to avoid the problems you outlined in your article . We are making things logical, making things make sense. So, you know, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was one of the greatest pieces of legislation ever. Im a big fan of it and certainly dont want any discrimination of any type going on under my watch. But we also dont want Regulatory Burdens to impede our ability to get things done and we dont want to penalize small municipalities who dont have the ability time of the gentleman has expired. The chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri, mr. Cleaver. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Again, thank you for being here. I dont want to be melodramatic, but when i was elected i said i dont want to be speaker, assistant speaker, i dont want to be the person in charge of trash, whatever. All i wanted was to be on the subcommittee on housing, only thing that was my biggest aspiration coming through congress. And it was because of my background and what i had seen and what has hurt me personally and many other people over the years which is when people make disparaging comments about People Living in Public Housing. You and i grew up very similar so you know thats not something that can give you great joy. My father living in his home today, my goal is to never let him know ahead of time that he can watch us on cspan, because i dont want him having done all the work he did to get four kids out to hear some of the things that people unintentionally say. Because this is the house i lived in for seven years. Six people, my mother, my father and my Three Sisters. Seven years. My father worked three jobs like a lot of the other people in our community, three jobs. Willie taylor, tommy nelson, katie boston, percy, cleveland, the troy kleiner, classmates of mine, their parents were doing the same thing. I never hear people today say i can hardly wait to get my own Public Housing unit. This is a serious thing to me, my family and a lot of other people. My goal is to do something before i leave here more than ive done and hopefully can inspire others to want to do something, to do some major overhauls of some of our policies. We were able to do 3700 together. I want to ask you a question about that. But i want it to be known that helping one family will not change the world, but it will change the world for that one family. And people want help and they need it from time to time. If you look at 17 in general genesis, when abram left going to the land of promise, he stopped at a place that many theologians call the halfway house. He stayed there until he can find a better route to the promised land. Public housing is this. A lot of people stay there until they can get someplace else. My father my father sent my mother to college when i was almost in the seventh grade. I yield back the balance of my time. Gentleman yields back. The chair recognizes the gentleman from michigan, mr. Huizinga. To your right. I see my colleague has just left. I know it was very emotional for him. I think this is a very emotional issue for a lot of us. In my family, i have a father who was born in 1921. He passed away a year and a half ago. My mother was born in 1931. They lived in flint. Thats where she was born and raised. Recently i went and visited. I asked my mom for a couple of the addresses where he family had moved around to. Myself. I had my fourth son with me who was third team. And i stopped. I stopped the car in front of the main house that my mother grew up in. I had cousins and uncles and aunts that all lived there, what i had one of my cousins reprimanding and a what were you doing in that neighborhood . I know how hard people have worked to get out of those situations. I saw it. I witnessed it. In cnet with my own mom as well. And it pains me that my colleague, my friend has felt that he has heard disparaging remarks about those who live in Public Housing. That was his quote. I wrote it down. This is the inspirational part. A lot of people stay until they can get somewhere else. And i know that is my goal. I believe that is his cool. I trust that is your goal as well. And i think the question in debate we have is how do we get back to how good . How do we allow that . As ive seen some of your discussions and we got a chance to talk in the past, not everybody takes advantage of those opportunities to move ahead ought to get out of a particular situation. They may believe what you are doing with moving to work, to allow flexibility for the Public Housing authorities, to attract private sector folks in their common attract these outside opportunities is commendable. It is my understanding that about 55 of able bodied adults receiving Housing Assistance are working. That to me is the key. How do we make sure that we are giving those folks who are working hard, you know, nonsenior citizens, nondisabled , ablebodied individuals, you know, do you support these work work requirements and that theyd better be sometimes manage people out of their comfort zone well, thank you for asking that question. You know, we all come at this from different angles and different Life Experiences. But you know, when you really sit down and talk to people from all these different places, we all really have similar wants and desires that we allow ourselves sometimes to be manipulated into thinking we are enemies. We are not enemies. You know, this issue of getting people to excel in realize the talent that god has given them is a serious issue because you know, there are those who would have everybody believe you are the dam and everybodys against you. We need to be concentrating on how can we actually get people to climb the ladder of opportunity . We have to recognize things like education. It doesnt matter where you come from or what your background if you get a good education in this country you can write your own ticket. We need to emphasize that is to be integrated into our living situations as well. Health care needs to be taken out of the political arena. We need to be putting their necks into a neighborhood so people dont use the emergency room as their primary care that costs five times more and also you wind up with all the stage for diseases because people dont have consistent care. All of the things we can solve if we as americans are willing to Work Together and not allow ourselves to be polarized. Closing seconds, i believe we need to look at how current Housing Assistance programs either incentivize that or hinder that opportunity and hope well talk more about that. Absolutely. The china recognizes the gentlelady from new york, ms. Velazquez. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Dr. Courson, i am here. Im the only puerto rican american citizen has a fitness committee. So since i dont have President Trump in front of me, it just would like for you to let him know how shameful all the tweets that he put out this morning, how offended and insulted im as an american citizen. And i would like to suggest that the president gets in history lessons regarding the puerto rican relationship with the United States. In 1898, american troops invaded puerto rico. American troops took over puerto rico. In a team 17, Puerto Ricans didnt invite the United States armed forces. It was invaded. So what not invasion comes responsibility. In a team 17, american citizenship was imposed on Puerto Ricans, timely subeight they could join the armed forces and fight. Is to show up and make and provide the assistance and the relief that american citizens need. They dont need this type of insult. And by the way, why is it that he doesnt put the same to it when it comes to texas or florida . You invaded puerto rico, we invaded, the United States of america invaded puerto rico. My uncle participated in the korean war. We shed blood to defend the freedoms that every american in this country enjoys. So to kick fellow citizens when they are down is shameful. You said that youre providing assistance for those who lost their homes in puerto rico. I hear from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Affordable Housing groups on the island that the federal governments housing response has not been sufficient. What are you doing . In my hometown we lost 10,000 homes that were destroyed. What kind of assistance are you providing . Well, thank you for asking that question, and, you know, i do sympathize greatly with the people who have lost so much. You know, theres 114,000 singlefamily homes that are fhabacked, and many of them have sustained significant damage. Our people are on the ground including one of our associate Senior Assistant secretaries who is a puerto rican and has been extraordinarily helpful to me. Hes moved over there what kind of assistance are you providing for those who lost their homes . Dozens of others who have gone over this. And what we are providing are insurance for those who have lost their homes through section 203h, 203k for rehabilitation of homes dr. Carson, are you working with some housing groups on the ground . And i will be going to puerto rico myself thats great, but that doesnt provide the assistance that they need today. You know, people are dying. Im very and its the rainy season in puerto rico. I understand that fema promised to bring parts for roofs that were lost. Its the rainy season. People are diagnose people are dying today. Fema is the First Responder there. They are gathering information. Were working with them in that process for the longterm recovery. Dr. Carson, when you were nominated by the president , i said what does he know about housing . But then, you know, youre a doctor, and you say that youre going to take care of those who are suffering from Health Issues in Public Housing. I see a disconnect between your confirmation hearings and your commitment to address the issue of asthma, respiratory illnesses in Public Housing and cutting 2 billion out of the capital and operating funds for housing. The time of the gentlelady has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. Royce. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, at the outset here i just wanted to invite you to come to my district, especially out to san bernardino, california, where the Housing Authority is working on a moving to work program. Its an agency thats been up and running for some time there, and its running very, very effectively. And theyve had a number of successful selfsufficiency programs including Home Ownership programs and term limits on those and work requirements. Wed love to have you see this firsthand if you could. Sure. I wanted to extend that. And i was wondering if you could talk a little more about what the department is doing to advance mtw as its called, the moving to work program, and other sustainable best practices which lift people out of their situation and on to economic independence. Sure. Thank you for that question. The moving to Work Initiative really was to provide various is municipalities with the ability to be flexible recognizing that they were probably the people who best knew what their needs were. And this really allows for a significant amount of innovation. The first 39 districts that benefited from this have produced some pretty good results, and thats resulted in us extending the program to another 100 communities over the next seven years. Im hopeful that well be able to go far beyond that and look forward to working with you on ways that we can expand that program. Thank you. Were looking for everything that is highly effective. Very good. And, you know, some of the programs that have been talked about here this morning have had some components that are highly effective. We are going to make sure that we learn from those things and continue to push those things. There may be different mechanisms to do it, but were not going to abandon those things. That would be foolishness. And two other questions. One is the department, the department is reviewing its policy to allow pace liens on fhafinanced loans. As you know, the defaults on these loans are on the rise. And i was going to ask if you could comment on when you might make a decision on whether to withdraw the current mortgagee letter or clarify how the fha will treat these pace loans. Well, obviously, its a serious issue when you put in the first lien position anybody other than the lender exactly. Thats an issue its very concerning to us. Yes, thats very concerning to me too, and were taking that into consideration. Well have a decision on that soon. And one last question. As you know, mr. Secretary, the gses have engaged in significant credit risksharing transactions. This shields american taxpayers to some extent, and gwen moore and i have a bill to get them to do even more in terms of that approach. Ive been told that the fha may have the authority to do similar risksharing transactions or at least purchase coinsurance to reduce the risk to the public. And i think this could be a very constructive means of reducing taxpayer exposure. Would you support legislation here or regulatory clarification of fhas existing authority to explore credit risk sharing . We have already engaged in some discussions on that or continuing those. Im very much looking forward to having an fha commissioner, but i agree with you that that is an area ripe for discussion and movement. Well, thank you, secretary carson, and ill yield back. Appreciate it. Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes the gentlelady from ohio, ms. Beatty. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witness for being here. I have a series of questions, and for the sake of time to get through them, many of them, mr. Secretary, ill ask you to simply affirm or deny with a yes or no vote. On july 12th i sent you a letter signed by more than 15 or 20 of my other colleagues as members of congress. And in that letter and i want to, mr. Chairman, enter that letter into the record. Without objection. So first of all, i want to know, did you receive the letter and read it. I dont know what was in the letter, so i cant tell you whether i received it. Okay. It was requesting that you follow through on your predecessors decision to lower these annual premiums citing the fiscal strength of the fund and historically low Home Ownership rates especially among firsttime home buyers. Certainly ive had some correspondence on that, so it was probably your letter. So did you respond to it and i didnt get it . Is that what youre saying . You read it . Did you respond to it or im i personally did not. Did my staff respond to you . I dont know. I think we did from some intergovernmental relations person sent us a paragraph. It was it didnt, it did not, in my opinion, it did not answer my questions. Okay. Well, i can answer for you now. I guess the reason im asking you this, is it your practice when members of the United States Congress Sends a letter personally addressed to you, that you pass it on to a congressional intergovernmental i dont know what that person does relations person to say that they have received it . I did not address it to them. Yeah. Many letters that come do not letters from members of congress . Do not the committee youre testifying in front of . Did not come to me. Im saying it may be sent personally to me, but it doesnt actually end up in my hands. Somebody else is actually looking at it. So you dont get you know, people write me personally all the time. But if a member so let me ask a different question. So if a member of congress is writing to you about issues that youre coming to testify before this committee, you get it, it doesnt get in your hands, and you say, oh, well, so what . You dont answer . No, someone else actually goes through it first, and then they bring it to me. Let me ask a different no, my time. Im going to resend a letter, and im going to ask you, would you answer the letter thats coming from me and 20 other members of congress . If i get when the letter is brought to me, we will give you a response. We or you . I would like to ask would you respond to my i can respond to you right now. Well, i have some other questions, so maybe afterwards ill leave the letter with you, and you can respond to me. So often times when members come here, you represent not only a secretary of housing, but the president. So i have a question for you. Weve spent a lot of time talking about puerto rico and the virgin islands, so this can be yes or no. Do you think it was president ial for President Trump to throw paper towels when he was in puerto rico, yes or no . Thats not a yes or no question. Sure, it is. Yes, it was president ial or, no, it wasnt president ial. I dont believe second question. Do you think it was president ial when President Trump talked about, to members in puerto rico, that they were messing up the budget . You know, i is that president ial, yes or no . I think it would be wonderful if we talked about what we can do to help our people rather than deny them do you think it was president ial when he asked the people in puerto rico how many people had died and then compared it to a greater number in katrina . Again, i think we should be talking about positive things and what we can do well, i think youre absolutely right. And for me, positive like congressman cleaverman, all my life ive wanted to serve on this committee. I didnt live in Public Housing, but i dedicated more than 25 years of my life. My very first job, professional job was working in Public Housing. So let me move to something positive. In this Committee Chairman clayton of the securities and Exchange Commission testified before this committee. He said although he had not asked for more funding in fiscal year 18, that in fiscal year 19 he would be requesting more monies. In fiscal year 18, the budget request from hud, you requested a 15 cut to your budget. Will you be asking for an increase in your, in fiscal year 19 . Thats positive, so i assume youre going to tell me yes. We may well. We continue to ask for what we need based on information that we derive, so evidence is what drives our budget request. Thank you, and i yield back. Time of the gentlelady has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from florida, mr. Posey. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And, mr. Secretary, thank you for appearing today, and thank you for the character and the integrity, the heart and the class and the aspirations that you bring to your position. Many people would say that you had maybe one of the best opportunities in the world to become a failure, to be dependent on government. You proved all the critics wrong, and you became the model of success, of achieving the American Dream and proof that anyone can do it. And i applaud you there. And i think a lot of people applaud you for that. And i applaud you for trying to help others do that too. Thank you. You know, unfortunately theres a lot of people that somehow benefit from people being dependent on government because they think it keeps them being elected. I think selfsufficiency is the way to go, and you obviously do too. And thank you for your efforts to transfer people from dependency to selfsufficiency. I want to apologize for some of the mean and nasty comments made toward you today. Theyre undeserving. They are attempts to shame you while they criticize the government for attempting to shame somebody, the president for attempting to shame somebody. That may be logical to some people, but im sure its probably foreign to you, and youre probably wondering about that. Im used to it. Yeah. [laughter] most intelligent people would. But we all have the same people in our districts. They hate the president , and they hate anybody that doesnt hate the president. So were going to theyre going to be around for a while, so we just get used to it and do the right things for the right reasons which you have a history of doing. Your Florida Initiative to reimagine how hud works, to restore the American Dream and to rethink American Communities is an awesome plan, and my question to you this morning is, you know, how can we become more engaged in helping you achieve those goals . Well, thank you very much for your comments and for that question. You know, i will be coming back to you particularly as we continue to analyze what works, because in order to be efficient we need the ability to be flexible. And to be able to address things quickly so that we dont have to go through so many different channels. Were not just going to come to you vaguely with Something Like that. Were going to say specifically we need to do x quickly. So just be open to that. We want to work with you. We want to benefit from your collective knowledge, experience and the fact that you represent the people. And we are Public Servants. That means we work for the people. They dont work for us. And, therefore, we need to know through you how we can best serve them. But we want to work with you to do things in an effective way. Well, thank you, mr. Secretary. Clearly, you have a heart of a servant, and you can always count on me, i know, and most of the people here for our support. God bless you. I yield back, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Gentleman yields back. Chair now recognizes the chairman from washington, mr. Hecht. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Secretary carson, ive been interested since i first arrived here in the reverse Mortgage Market and not just because its called the he [inaudible] program as an acronym. We were able to pass legislation giving you more flexibility at the department to run the program with an eye forward improving its financial performance. Right. But its, its always been hard to get a good sense of how the reverse Mortgage Program is doing because the act i chew barrel numbers swing actuarial numbers swing so wildly from year to year. In addition, although the program is small compared to the fha forward Mortgage Program, the swings in reverse mortgages are so large theyre pushing around the capital ratio, as you know, for the [inaudible] fund and affecting mortgage Insurance Premiums for the more stable guard program. I know you havent been through a reporting cycle yet for these act i chew barrel reports, but i wanted to get your initial thoughts on whether youd be open to changes in the framework. Im thinking about asking gao to consider options including moving the reverse Mortgage Program out of the mmi fund or creating a new forecasting assumptions for the reverse program that would create more stability over time and from year to year. What are your impressions . I think thats a very worthy thing to pursue. You know, were looking at just over the last year 7. 7 billion out of the mmi because of heck, m. The changes that weve made as of this month and the ones Going Forward from this point i dont think well have that problem, but we still have the residual problem there. So, yes, i believe that would be a worthy pursuit. Secondly, i want to ask about housing. I think the costs of shelter is kind of rapidly going out of control in a lot of communities, especially in my part of the country. I think part of the reason for that personally is that we have poorly designed federal structure for dealing with housing policy because nobodys looking at the whole picture at all. There are no policymakers charged with looking across the whole spectrum. Its incredibly siloed. Thats not just an observation on the number of programs. Im talking about policy making itself. So even if you look at congress, for example, federal mortgage assistance is spread across agriculture committee, this committee and the Veterans Affairs committee. Even within this committee, the primary Mortgage Market is overseen by Financial Institutions subcommittee while the secondary Mortgage Market is in the housing and insurance or Capital Markets depending on whos doing the securitizing. It may be that a bunch of narrowlytailored programs is the best way to address housing costs, although i frankly doubt it. But as a result of these silos, i think we address the problem, each of the problems in isolation so we separate Home Ownership from rentals, market rate housing from Affordable Housing and the rents too damn high. But my view is housing is an ecosystem. And all the parts are connected. And especially through housing prices. Youre new to this, this whole world of housing policy. And so my hope is that youre kind of looking at it with fresh eyes. Im wondering if you see the same thing i do, that we deal with this in a fractured and fragmented and siloed way . And if you do, do you have any ideas about how we might be able to address it so that we can all get about the business of insuring not just keeping the dream of Home Ownership alive for americans, but also insuring that everybody has a good place, a good shelter, a good home in which to reside . As i say, the number one priority here ought to be blanket, pillow, roof. If you dont have a pillow to lay your head on, a blanket to cover yourself with and a roof over your head, all the other problems in life get amplified very considerably. Well, you know, we do have to make sure that we are willing to work as cross different silos so that do you see it as a problem. So that we can address it holistically. In the past, we have not done that. Ive been engaged with several conversations with secretary mnuchin as well as the nec, the domestic policy council, department of agriculture to develop more holistic approaches to these problems. I think thats the only way were going to get them solved. I look forward to working with you on that. Yield back the balance of my time, mr. Chair. Time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from florida, mr. Ross. Thank you, chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. And, again, i appreciate all your efforts. You know, where im from is Central Florida and the tampa bay area has made quite an expansion in Public Housing and has done, i think, a very good job to the point where theyve got a wait list of 13,000 people. And, you know, were trying to expand it, were trying to work more with, of course, your office. But one of the things that ive got a concern about is the voucher recipients and the portability of vouchers. And i guess my concern is, is that youve got Regional Housing authorities. How can we best design these so that we can get some of these people off of wait lists and, if nothing else, consolidate them, but allow them to have better access to Affordable Housing through this Voucher Program . Well, you know, thats, obviously, a huge issue and a big question, how do we get those waiting lists down. Yep. Should we be prioritizing certain types of people rather than just have a consecutive waiting list. Those are, those are questions that were examining now. Well be happy to work with you on those. But again, the key, i think, is, you know, the Public Private partnerships, programs which have brought in 4. 3 billion of private money to get rid of some of these capital backlogs right. And to create even more housing. And the new tax plan that has been put forward, they recognize how important litak is and have included a way to insure that it remains profitable for people. Because this is how were going to get out of this problem. I agree. Weve got a good Voucher Program. It needs to be able to follow the jobs, because thats important because, of course, it brings dignity. But the incentive of private capital coming into the market to partner with hud is very crucial. And i guess my concern is weve seen some successes in that regard. And not only the capital, but also the discipline and the counseling thats necessary. The family selfsufficiency program, for example [audio difficulty] do you think that thats been a program that we should continue to not only fund, but to expand . Oh, absolutely. Anything that has to do with creating selfsufficiency. And were looking for, you know, innovative approaches for that, you know . One of the things that im looking at in the future is taking a sliver of the monthly subsidy and putting it in what would be like an escrow. Yes. And that would be used for the routine maintenance of that unit. So if theres not a lot of routine maintenance, it just continues to grow and grow. But if the holes poked in the screen and the lightbulbs are broken and the door needs to be painted every time, its not going to accumulate. You let the people know how much money is in it, because that incentivizes them to really take care of the property. And if they leave Public Housing within 510 years, they get that money for a down payment. That has the dual effect of allowing people to get into housing, but it also teaches them the responsibilities of Home Ownership because they start acting like homeowners it changes the culture. Right. It grows appreciation and builds a base of dignity in ownership. And i think exactly. When you talked about in your opening about innovation is key, i think innovation is the absolute compass we need to be following in order to change a model that has not worked very well over the last 50 years. Exactly. Finally, the moving to work program. What more can we to for those that are nonelderly and are workcapable to provide them with a moving to work incentive . Well, the key thing that we have to recognize is that, you know, people have tried, you know, different iterations of that over the years trying to you work and you get out. And as they start climbing the ladder, we pull the rug out from underneath them. Right. What weve got to do is let them get far enough up the ladder that theyre not even looking down to see if there are rungs there anymore. So we just need to understand how that works and the timing of it. I appreciate it. I think that program id like to see it expanded. I mean, it is a Pilot Program, and weve seen it in orlando, its working there. Absolutely. With that, my time is up, and ill yield back. Thank you, chairman. Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from new york, ms. Maloney. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman and ms. Ranking member. Id like to the build on congressman ross questions about mix private partnership Public Private partnership. And you discussed right now the importance of it and is your support for it in addressing our Housing Needs, but in your 2018 budget request you target programs that encourage these partnerships. Personally to leverage, as you said, is so important and not enough dollars out there in Affordable Housing and private housing organizations really fend on these depend on these Government Programs. One in particular, 202, senior housing, theres always a waiting list by seniors needing the housing but also developers who are willing to put it up. But the funding hasnt been there. Im glad to see theres more in this budget, but still its been cut back dramatically, quite frankly, from when i first came to congress. But how can you think the administration can encourage Public Private partnerships if its budget largely cuts out the governments role and cuts the funding for the governments role in the relationship . All right. Well, thank you for that question. I understand the basis of it. You know, heres the situation. Would we like to have almost Unlimited Money to deal with these problems . Absolutely. That would be ideal. But we dont. And we have a 20 trillion national debt. Now, im not going to have to pay it. You probably wont either, although youre younger than i am. You may have to pay some of it thats true, and i want to get on to another question, you know, but if you put your money into things that leverage more money and more housing, its certainly a dollar well spent. And the budget does cut the private Public Partnership section, and my request is to see if we can Work Together to see if we can restore some of it. Absolutely. Be happy to work with you on that. I also, i want to invite you to my district. I represent a lot of hud projects. My mayor, my City Council President , everybodys asking you to come and take a tour. So if youre ever in new york, wed love to set something up for you to look at some of the things we have going on the ground. Okay. But my district is very different, as you know. In new york people dont live horizontally, we live vertically. And we live in coop toes, and we live in coops, and we live in condos. And people are asking for you to revisit opening up assistance to firsttime homeowners. Thats been one of your themes. And right now, especially seniors are asking if the coop owners could be part of huds reverse Mortgage Program. This is the type of housing i represent, and right now coop owners are unfairly excluded from fmas re fhas reverse Mortgage Program. And i would say for no real reason. So my question is, will you consider allowing owners of housing coops to participate in fhas reverse Mortgage Programs . I certainly dont see any reason why we shouldnt engage in that conversation with you. Well, thats great. And lets look at the numbers, and lets see what works. Because im doing things that make sense. Well, thank you very much, because people are requesting that, particularly seniors. And we have not been able to achieve that, so this would be a great breakthrough. Thank you for absolutely. Wanting to look at it. As you know, fha plays a countercyclical role in the Housing Market. It expands in times of market stress, which we went through in 2008. When everyone else is i pulling back, and it shrinks in times of market stability. And the most recent annual report shows that fhas market share has actually diminished substantially since its peak during the housing crisis and has stabilized in these past few years. But despite this, some people continue to claim that the fhas playing an outsized role in the Housing Market and demand that fha shrink. So do you agree that fha is currently playing too large a role in the Housing Market, or, you know yeah. Well, right now were at about 13. 2 . Uhhuh. Which is sort of back down to the prehousing crisis level. It expanded during the crisis, like it should. Its sort of like an accordion. Its a buffer. And thats the way that its supposed to work. Thats the ideal situation. Doesnt mean that there arent some reforms that were looking at to make it even more efficient. But generally, it has a very positive balance, and it allows people to be able to get into homes particularly firsttime home buyers, a lot of minorities. And we want to make sure that we maintain that strength. Thank you very much. Okay. Time of the gentlelady has expired. The chair wishes to inform all members that we will be excusing the witness at 12 30 today. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, mr. Pittenger. Finish. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you again for being with us today. Your demeanor and patience has been exemplary. I have so much appreciation for the focus and clarity of mission that you bring, your Life Experience offers so much for each of us to pay keen attention to. I particularly appreciate all of your continued effortses on behalf of those efforts on behalf of those individuals who are suffering, of course, from the natural disasters that have occurred in our country. We have seen unprecedented damage that has been caused by Hurricane Harvey and irma and maria. Our hearts go out, obviously, to the victims of all of these awful storms. As you are very much aware, a year ago Hurricane Matthew struck North Carolina with subsequent 1,000year floods, severely damaged 98,000 homes and 19,000 businesses. We still have, oh, 150 or so families that are still living in fema trailers. Its affected our poorest counties in our state and, frankly, some of the poorest counties in the country. Some of those counties i know we hope to show you hopefully in early november when you can return to our state. What i would like to ask you, mr. Secretary, is what can you say in terms of what the department is doing on longterm Disaster Relief for these areas that are not in the media and not on everyones attention, but the pain and suffering is still there . What can you say is being done currently . Well, thank you for that. And thank you for your extremely good advocacy for the people of North Carolina. I did have a scheduled visit there, as you know, recently. Then this little problem called harvey came up. Sure. But we are rescheduling that visit to look at that very issue in terms of, you know, the longterm recovery function. You know, we didnt get the final plan from the state in terms of recovery until the 21st of april yes, sir. Of this year. So we, we are working with your state and local officials already and will continue to do so. But we have not by any stretch of the imagination forgotten about that just because these other ones have come up. Are you comfortable that hud has mechanisms in place in not just our state, but all states to insure that money is spent fiscally accountable and in a timely way . For some reason im not hearing well. Well, are you comfortable that the states have accountable structures in place oh. That the taxpayer money is being used in an appropriate way . Let me put it this way. At the state level, there seems to be more accountability than there is frequently at a lower level. So one of the things that im finding just in looking at past data in terms of efficiency, you know, working with the state tends to be a little bit better than working with a hundred different i municipalities. Yes, sir. My district, as you may be aware, includes charlotte. Its a major metropolitan area of our state. Ive got seven other additional rural counties, and and i would like to ask you what is huds involvement in these rural areas particularly and the value that it can bring to these communities . Well, one thing that sometimes people assume is that hud is not interested in rural areas because its called housing and urban development. But obviously, if you look at programs that we have and those in association with usda, we do pay quite a bit of attention, maybe want to rename the department at some point to reflect that. Theres particularly large issues with poverty and with drug use in the rural areas, and we are working with across the silos with the department of justice, department of agriculture on those issues. Thank you, mr. Secretary. And thank you again for your great spirit and your clarity of mission and dedication. Thank you. We truly appreciate you. Thank you. I yield back. Gentleman yields back. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from michigan, mr. Kildee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you again, secretary carson, for being here. As i mentioned in my Opening Statement and as we chatted briefly before the beginning of this hearing, im from flint, michigan, a community not far from where you grew up. And a community that has been struggling in many ways for decades but in a particular way for the past few years as a result of the water crisis. And i referenced in your you referenced in your testimony that the department under your leadership intends to take on some of these issues of exposure to toxic chemicals in housing, and lead is a really significant issue. You know as a physician the impact that lead exposure, high levels of lead exposure can have on the brain of a developing child. And so this tragedy, while in the eyes of many is sort of over its not in the news every day its an ongoing struggle. Not only in terms of the infrastructure needs which are slowly being met, the health and Development Needs which are not entirely met and the redevelopment challenge that this Community Faces as a result of a real gut punch to the community. So the challenges that it was already dealing with have been exacerbated by being known as a city of 100,000 people that had poisoned water. The impact on housing values, the impact on Neighborhood Development is palpable, and its dangerous. In the previous administration, we had kind of an allhandsondeck approach to flints recovery. And i was pleased to see during the campaign when thencandidate, nowPresident Trump visited flint, he said and im quoting him this is regarding flint we will get it fixed. It will be fixed quickly and effectively. And as i stated, flint is not fixed yet. I reached out to the white house very early on and asked for a point person on flints recovery because there is a legitimate and important federal role in this. Have not received a response. Its important that we have some sense of who we can work with. To your knowledge, is this a point person . I havent been able to get an answer out of the white house. I wonder if you have a sense of that, if theres a point person that we could work with . Well, i agree that there needs to be one, and we certainly will be willing to look into that for you. I appreciate that. And perhaps as we mentioned, you and i could find time to meet. I have a real interest in the work of your department broadly, and id like to share some thoughts with you, but specifically to talk about how my community can continue to receive the support that it surely deserves. Absolutely. So if we can find time to do that, i would enjoy getting on your calendar, so thank you for that. And i know this has been raised, i raised it a bit. The preconditions that led to the crisis in flint are not unique to flint. We have seen a lot of older communities and i heard the reference to not just traditional, large cities, but small towns as well that have not seen the kind of private investment and that still do require some public support for their Development Challenges in order for them to be fully competitive and make the contributions that they should make. So i am really concerned about continuing, deep cuts to the Community Development block program, for example. A highly flexible program, a form of federal investment that really defaults to the states and in many cases directly to local jurisdictions making decisions for themselves as the what their needs might be. You know, as in the case of any program, there could be problems. But what i fear is that this administration and im really interested in your take on this is taking a throw the baby out with the bath water approach. This is a really Important Program that is essential to lots of communities. And you help me understand what your position is on this yeah. This Important Program . My position is we should save the baby. Dont throw it out with the bath water. The fact of the matter is, as ive mentioned before, there are multiple good things in these programs that have been very effective, some of which youve just mentioned. We will make sure that those things continue. So long i appreciate that. So long as we dont take the approach that the only way to help the programs is to just make them so small as theyre not consequential any longer. I agree that theres a need for change. Ive talked to the Ranking Member about changes in cdbg that im interested in pursuing. So so long as the solution is not simply to, essentially, eliminate the program over time, im happy to work with you on that. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Thanks for your testimony. Time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. Rothfus. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Good morning, mr. Secretary, welcome. Morning. My district is home to an Organization Called hearth which provides vital Transitional Housing Services to victims of domestic violation. For more than 20 years, women and families in Allegheny County fleeing Domestic Abuse have had a reliable place to go to that provides protection from danger. Hearth has provided hundreds if not thousands of my constituents with a safe space and the support they need to transition to permanent housing. Hearth has a Compelling Mission and it fulfills a priceless service for the community. This program has a strong track record because it provides residents with the Supportive Services they need to transition to selfsufficiency. Despite this, hearth and similar providers have lost or are in danger of losing their hud funding unless they abandon the services and high standards that have contributed to their success. This tie into the Housing First policy that my colleague, mr. Barr, raised earlier in the context of drug treatment programs. Under your predecessor, hud adopted the Housing First policy and deprioritized programs that failed to conform to that orthodoxy. Indeed, continuums of care were told that hud will be less generous in funding transitional programs. I asked secretary castro about his position on transitional housing programs like hearth and their future place in our Housing Assistance toolbox. I greatly i would generally characterize his response as a full endorsement of the Housing First policy which, again, is going to entail a depriorityization of transitional housing. I would appreciate your talking a look at this issue, and id appreciate your feedback on whether you think that we have to really keep our eye on the ball on transitional house anything the context of this Housing First policy. Id be very, very happy to work with you on that. But everything that were going to do is going to be driven by the numbers, driven by the evidence, whats actually effective. And again, when i talk Housing First, i may be talking something a little different than what previous secretary was talking. Okay. We want to follow up with you on that, because we want to make sure that this orthodoxy that he was going after isnt negatively impacting really good programs. Right. That have been really beneficial to our community. I agree. A number of folks have mentioned the moving to work program. Weve had hearings about that, and its been discussed today. I believe that this Program Offers flexibilities that can help Public Housing authorities better serve their local populations. My district has one of the housing authorities does have a moving to work program. There are others that would like it. And im, i want to hear from you whether you support the expansion of the moving to work program. I was very happy with the expansion to another hundred areas, and im hopeful that we can with the help of Congress Move far beyond that. Yeah, id like to see it really transition from being a Pilot Program. Its been a Pilot Program since 1996. I dont know how long you have to have a program be a Pilot Program. [laughter] one of the three National Program objectives for cbdg is that projects principally benefit low and moderate income persons. Critics have noted that the funds often end up being used for parks, pools, street signs and community centers, key accelerating dollars from those communities diverting dollars from those communities with the greatest need particularly in housing. In your testimony for the House Appropriations committee this past june is, you stated that the cdbg program is, quote, not well targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated a measurable impact on communities. Can you elaborate on that . Yeah. Very much some of the same things that you just mentioned in the question. And some abuses that are even more significant than that. This is a program that, again, has some very good components. And the things that are good in that program and home program, in various programs were not just going to abandon those things. [laughter] were going to, obviously, utilize the information in order to improve what were able to do. You mentioned in your testimony before the House Appropriations Committee Earlier this year that the first hud secretary, robert weaver, said that we must look for human solution ises not just policies solutions not just policies and programs. What do you think he meant by i hope what he meant is that we need to be looking at the people themselves as opposed to just the concept of sticking them in a house and thinking that our job is done. If we develop the Human Capital that exists here, it benefits us all. It sounds like that would still be relevant today, as relevant today as it was when secretary weaver first said that. Would you agree with that . That, that would be the way that i would look at it. Thank you, mr. Secretary. I yield back. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. Gonzalez. I yield to the Ranking Member. I yield my time. Thank you very much. I appreciate having the time. Im sitting here, and im listening to how much you care about the most vulnerable in our society and how you want to help people become independent and out of poverty, and yet your budget and what you are advocating for and what you are advocating against does not really define your representation that you care about these vulnerable people. Youre cutting Public Housing by 2 billion. Housing chart vouchers by 2 billion. You have members on the opposite side of the aisle talking about programs that are funded by the Community Development block grant, they dont even know that youve completely eliminated that. The Home Investment Partnership program, we talk about the National Housing crisis that we have, and the National Housing trust fund is completely eliminated. And the charts Neighborhood Initiative eliminated. And, you know, section 811 housing for persons with disabilities cut by 121 million. And so theres one thing that stands out in my mind based on the campaign and and looking at what happened in the primaries and things that the president said and how he talked to you and others and demeaned you so much. But one of the things that stands out in my mind so vividly is how he mocked and mimicked a disabled journalist. And so you have, lets say he has openly mocked disabled people, and huds most recent Budget Proposal which is supported and defended proposes a steep 18 cut for section 181 program which is focused 811 program which is focused on serving low income persons with disabilities as well as rent increases on section 811 residents. This is very concerning in light of the Critical Role that hud plays in providing Housing Assistance for low income persons with disabilities as well as enforcing the Fair Housing Act which protects persons with disabilities against discrimination in the Housing Market. Do you remember seeing that display by the president where he mocked and and mimicked a disabled journalist . Do you remember seeing the sight of that . I remember seeing the episode that youre referring to. Do you think it was wrong for the president to send that kind of message about what he cares about, disabled people . Well, you know, im not really here to talk about the president. I really want to talk about the people that were trying to well, yes, i want to talk about the people too. Right now i want to talk about the disabled people. And i want to know if his attitude is such that it is reflected in this budget. And you defend the budget, and are you defending in any shape, form or fashion the fact that the person who wanted to be the president of the United States of america for all people would treat disabled people that way . What do you think about that . As a pediatric neurosurgeon, you know, a large portion of my patients were disabled people. All right. So you do care about disabled people, is that right . Of course. When youre in front of disabled people who are advocating for resources to help with their lives and they ask you about the president and the fact that he mocked and mimicked disabled journalists during the campaign and they ask you do you defend the president in doing that, what did you say to them . I would say that im going to use the resources and the tall lens that we have talents that we have to look out for the interests of the disabled people. Were going to commit to making sure that so do you think the cut of 121 million is a demonstration of your support for the disabled, section 811 housing for persons who are disabled . I would say its not the amount of money, its the result that you get thats important. I beg your pardon . I cant hear you. I would say its not the amount of money, but rather the result that you achieve thats important. Well, you keep talking about the amount of money, but you know your real concerns and what you care about is reflected in the budget. And it is difficult for me to believe that you really care about the disabled when you are cutting the resources to them because of the difficulty in their lives and the tremendous needs that they have. It is difficult for me to believe you care about them with these kind of cuts. I yield back. Time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from texas, mr. Williams. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Ask thank you, secretary carson, for being here today. Thank you for your testimony. Absolutely. On a personal note, id like to thank you for reaching out to those of us who were involved in the baseball shooting. Yes. Appreciate that very much. Also want to thank you for your leadership. Ive been around leaders all my life, and youre a leader. Thank you for that. And also i want to thank you for what youve done in texas. Im from texas. Yes. I want to thank you for what youve done in texas with Hurricane Harvey, for reaching out quickly, your response has just demonstrated swift action and resolute, and texans are grateful for what you, for what youve done. And im also happy that in such a pivotal time for our country, history of our nation, that your leadership understands the challenges we face. We talked about them today, and you understand the actions necessary to be the best possible steward of the taxpayer, which is important. Thank you. While assisting those in need to achieve their godgiven potential. So, mr. Secretary, i want to start by talking about faas Mortgage Insurance Program fha, which so many in my district have addressed with my staff and myself. Were aware of complaints from mortgage leonards who are being subjected to costly investigations and lawsuits by the department of justice for their participation in the Mortgage Insurance Program. While i applaud effort toss penalize lenders who deliberately submitted false or fraudulent mortgages, many lenders are being asked to pay penalties for loans that were reviewed and audited by the fha and hud. These actions forcing many lenders making it difficult for many firsttime home buyers to purchase homes. Can you explain what circumstances would institute a penalty on a lender after fha and hud have approved their mortgage . It has been a problem because of all the red tape and all the regulations. And theres so many traps shove to involved involved. When people do things that are really nonmaterial mistakes, and then they find themselves in the kind of difficulty that would basically drive them away from even wanting to be involved in the first place. Ive talked to attorney general sessions about that, and my staff and staff from doj are working on those regulatory barriers that are precluding people from wanting to get involved. The hud work force, which you supervise, is just short of 8,000 fulltime employees. In comparison to some federal agencies, this may appear to be fairly lean. 8,000 is hard to saline. But given the responsibilities and scope of the department, many could argue that the organizations unnecessarily large. Do you have the flexibility and authority to right the size of the department if needed and moving resources and employees as needed to meet the goals that you and the president have set . I think, i think we have close to what we need. Weve come down from 15,000 to 8,000 in recent years. And are looking with a very careful look at the actual need to hiring and bringing people on and utilizing them effectively and utilizing people in multiple areas in order to increase the efficiency, recognizing that we do have to be stewards of taxpayers money. Well, and then what challenges stand in the way of you organizing your department to achieve the best return on taxpayer investment, which would be cost and which would be cost and return . Well, what weve done is divided people into work groups with captains who are responsible, who bear some fiscal responsibility so that we dont simply say to the cfo which we dont have right now [laughter] that its your responsibility. And i think the more we can distribute that responsibility and make people responsible, the more fiscally responsible theyll be. Lastly, one of the promises President Trump made to the American People was to direct his administration to decrease regulation in order to spur growth. Regulations chill growth. Since you assumed your current position, what steps have you and President Trump taken to roll back harmful regulations in the housing industry . Well, we have established a Regulatory Reform committee, and they work through the office of the general counsel looking at major regulations. Were going, we have about ten of them right now which were looking to be able to get rid of on the way to quite a few more than that. Thank you again for being here. Thank you for your testimony. I yield my time. Thank you. Time of the gentleman has expired. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from nevada, mr. Cuen. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank you, mr. Secretary, for being here and for sharing your testimony and also your time as well. We know youre a very busy person, and we appreciate you taking the time to be here. Mr. Secretary, as you know, las vegas was the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis. My neighbors lost their home to foreclosure, i lost my home to foreclosure. The American Dream of Home Ownership from all these families ripped away. In the intervening years, las vegas masker thankfully, recovered. Foreclosures have slowed down. Our economies has continued to grow at a healthy pace. Were adding tens of thousands of jobs a year. However, Housing Stock isnt being built at the proportional rate. Were starting to see both home sale and rental prices rising at an alarming rate. Yearoveryear housing prices were up 13. 7 from september 2016 to september 2017. The Apartment Vacancy rate is one of the lowest in the country at 3. 1 . In clark county as a whole, we need more than 157,000 Affordable Housing units, but we only have 31,870 available. And theyre not keeping up with the increasing costs of the housing, so that will be the solution to many of the issues that are going on in our country, including the social issues because people get more irritable when theyre not doing well economically. Hud saw the Budget Proposal, the Home Investment Program would be elamed, the city of North Las Vegas relies on home to expand Affordable Housing options. What is local governments can pick up the slack . Is it your opinion that theyre just out of luck . And the federal government shouldnt be assisting them . Certainly looking for state and local governments to play a bigger role. Theres no question about that. But in terms, as ive said before, of the good things that programs do, including the home program, we examine those thing and look at the best ways to continue them. Thank you, mr. Secretary. The last question, according to executive directoff 0 of the Southern Nevada Regional Housing proposal your proputs fiscal 2018 budget would make it, i quote, difficult to keep if we maintenance of Housing Units for the public ump just read a slew of statistics that clearly show me were not going to need less Public Housing Going Forward but more. If our local experters are saying your budget is going to make it harder for them to just maintain what we have, how can we fulfill huds mandate of helping the American People put a roof over their heads . I hope that will be one of the reasons i can count on congress to help lift the cap on rent because thats how we get rid of those cap need backlogs. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Yield back. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from maine. Thank you, mr. Chairman, very hutch. Mr. Carson, wonderful to hear, i appreciate it very much. Good to see you again. Dr. Carson, i represent rural mississippi, note urban parts. You might not be familiar with this but mainees the oldest average age in the country. Its maine, not arizona or florida. Worry about folks in the rural area, our seniors, and worry about making sure we have a very strong safety net for those that are less fortune. Sevens are also great teachers. My mom is 89, my dad is 87. I love them to death. Very close to my parents and in their life and stage in their life. I remember when we were kids growing up in central maine it was a vibrant area, a lot of paper mills that were just humming along, and folks were happy and taking care of themselves. My parent were always working, and im sure similar to your situation in some regard, dr. Carson, my dad was a teacher and coach and always traveling. When he wasnt teaching, he was refereeing High School Basketball around the stayed. Its an eight hour drive from one part of my district to the other. My mom was a nurse. Worked the night shift at working home sod she was home when my brother and i got back from school. So we drew if with campt passion, in summer they worked, what may parents taught me, is not what they said, its what they showed me. It was honesty, compassion, and hard work. Yes. Hard work. Now, my first fulltime job was when i was 12 or 13. Worked for 50cents an hour pupping gas on a marina in a little lake in maine. I worked 40 hours a week and got a 20 bill. I was just on my way. Remember the excitement and purpose i had getting up every morning and making my lunch and going to work. My next job was working at a restaurant running the Cash Register for a buck an hour. Now two 20 bills working 4 hours a week. This is what learned. Now, what i have found is that theres so many people, mr. Carsson, that look for the perfect job. Retirement. You live long enough you know theres no perfect job. The value of work is the journey. You learn something from every job. You find dignity and selfpurpose and thats what your kids see and your grandkids see. That is the value of hard work. Now, i have one son who is 26. We are very close. He is a hard worker. I worry about sam all the time. Worry about his generation and i worry about him less because he knows the value of hard work. I can even imagine, mr. Carson, raising my son to say, okay, now you have had a good education, know how to work. Now we want to make sure you sign up for every Government Program you fine, and i know you believe the same thing. My question thank you, circumstance is you believe in the dignity and the selfpurpose of hard work. What it shows the next generation. What are you good folks doing at hud to make sure that our families, are up wardly mobile, can escape government depend defense dependence and have better lives and more freedom. Thank you for the question. We developed a concept called enVision Centers. It comes from the bible verse, probable very 29 18 that says without a vision the people perish. En you go into the low economic areas and you say to the kid, what could doo you wasnt to do when you grow up you get a blank stare, sometimes you the get a few things. But theres a thousand things and Vision Centers are to expose them to the other 8995. And tell them how to the other 995 and tell them how to getly and serve as a mentorship program. Its been demonstrate by studies that low income students who are mentored have a much Higher High School Graduation rate than those who do not. Also, facilitates child care because so many of the young women get pregnant and their education end at that point. We want them to get their high school diploma. We want to get their bachelors degree, mavsers degree, become independent and teach that to their children so we break the cycle of dependency that have occurred, and its also going to be a uniter for health care, clinics, whole host of things that to really expose young people, because a lot of them have not really been exposed to those things that are necessary in order to be successful in our society. Thank you for what you do for our country, mr. Carson. I yield back my time. Time of the gentleman has expired. The gentleman recognizes from texas, mr. Green. I thank the witness for appearing. Mr. Carson, mr. Secretary, dr. Carson, you have indicated that there will be substantial cuts to budget that hud has. Can you give me the dollar amount . Im showing its 6 billion. Is that correct . About right. Is that 13 of the budget. Yes. Will the cuts come from public house, hogue vouchers, Community Development block grants and other aid to low income persons . They come from a variety of sources including how much from Public Housing . Probably in the neighborhood of if you combine all the programs, two to three billion. Two to three billion. How much from housing vouchers, mr. Carson . Rather than go through a quiz on the number its not a quiz. Have the time to ask you questions about things you should have some knowledge of. If you have no knowledge, you can say. So ill accept it as an answer, but this is something that is win your bailiwick, my dear sir. How much from housing voucher. Again, can give you that number but well, if you would give it to me i would greatly appreciate. Id like to go on to Community Development block grant. Heres my point. I agree with you that its difficult to do these things that has to the do with my question. Youre answering a question im not asking to be candid. Will you kindly tell me how much hud is going hutch youre going to cut from the hud budget as it relates to housing vouchers . If you dont know, its okay to say you dont know. Dope hold you to things you dont know. Lets just move on and say that i dont want to offer a number because its such why would the secretary of hud not give the number, the amount youre cutting from housing vouchers, mr. Carson . Because youre the secretary of hud. Youre making the cut. Because we have already talked about the total amount of the cuts. Well, the total amount does not help me when it comes to the housing vouchers. I have people who use housing vouchers and i need to be able to explain to them, mr. Carson, how much the cut portendses for them. How much, mr. Carson . Lets hear your number. Well, mr. Carson, forgive more for coughing. Mr. Carson, youre the witness testifying today. And if you want a moment to ask someone behind you, i would gladly accord you that moment. I dont want to open the book and look at the numbers. I see. You choose not to say how much youre cutting from housing vouchers. How much are you cutting forgot Community Block grants. I want to talk debt. You dont get to talk about what you want to today. You get to talk about what want you to talk about. You get to answer the question is pose. But i also want to answer the question you can answer them the way you want but it but if you want tee lack of knowledge you can do that. How much from the block grants, mr. Secretary. Im, anytime not you dont know how much from Community Development block grants. Not going the list this much, this much and this much. Ill move on, mr. Carson. Accept your lack of knowledge. Now, mr. Carson, there seems to be a belief among the ranks of those who have opportunities to help others, who have been blessed themselves, they seem to think that the rich need more, that the poor can do more with less but the rich will have to have nor do more. Mr. Carson, if poor people could do more with less, there would be no poor people. Poor people are not poor because they choose to be. I know about your state of mind comment. But theyre not poor because they choose to be poor. Have you not noticed just for edification purposes im sure youre aware of it but the but there may be people listening who are not. Black unemployment, mr. Carson, is always, with and exceptions, about twice that of white unemployment. There are many rones many reasons for this but that fact has a hot to do with what people can do with money that they have and what they cant do with the money they dont have. There are other factors involved in this country other than a state of mind. There is still, mr. Carson, discrimination in the United States of america. While you may not suffer it, there are others who do. And they need to know what you plan to do, and i regret youre unable toll us today. Yield back the balance of my time, mr. Chairman. The positions you ascribe to me are your opinion of what i think. Theyre not what i think. Mr. Chairman if he chooses to respond and say this, i then the time let him know that my positions at the time of the gentleman has articulated and did not expired, the chair now wreck nyes the gentleman from new york. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Secretary carson, is there anything that you would like to say . Using my time . Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Sometimes i get at tired of people ascribing to me things that people have said that i believe, and i appreciate an opportunity to say this. When i say that poverty is largely a state of mind, what i am saying is that the way that people approach things has a lot to do with what happens to them. If your mind set is one that im a victim and everybody else is in control of my life and i just need to sit here and wait for them to do something for me, you are going to approach life very differently from somebody who says im going to take this issue into my own hands. One thing learned from my mother. She came from a very large rural family, got married when she was 13. Later on discovered her husband was a bigamies, had on a third agreed education, worked three jobs as a time. One thing about my mother, she was never a victim. She never allowed to us be victims. And that was very important, and she did that for other members of our family, too, who are in a very bad situation, and she convinced them they didnt have to be there and they came out of that situation. She was really quite an interesting person. Now, i realize that not everybody has a mother like mine, but i also recognize that we as a society would do much better if we stopped sitting around trying to tear each other apart start saying, what can we do to change the attitudes and to create different outcomes from people . There are those who allow themselves to be manipulated and to just creating dissense rather than trying to figure out a way we can actually solve a problem. Isnt that what this whole government was supposed to be about . Representatives who can help us solve the problems. Not people who simply it there and try to tear things down and try to create dissension. This is the United States ofmer, a place that rose from nowhere to the pinnacle of the world in record time, why . Bus way created an atmosphere of innovation. Were there mistakes on probably . Absolutely. Are we a Perfect Society . No, because we consist of human beings. Thats why we need a savior. But we really can do much better than what were doing if we stop fighting each other and start figuring out how were going to solve these problems. Thank you, mr. Secretary, for being here, for your service. You are someone who wants to lift people up and provide a more opportunity, not to keep them struggling but to have all the abilities, all the tools necessary to be able to rise up out of that situation for a better life. Feel like our country is blessed to have you serving as our secretary of hud. It is a calling that hopefully will provide agreed opportunity for you to empower Many Americans desperate for your leadership to help them have that ant. Want to speak about veteran homelessness. On any gift night with hud numbers 40,000 veterans in the United States are struggling with homelessness. Any veteran who raise their hand willing to serve our country should have a roof over their head, shoes on their feet, food on their table so the ultimate goal for that number will always be pursuing the permanent solution of zero. We know that Voucher Programs which give flexibility to americans struggling from Affordable Housing has been shown to be more effective than the traditional Housing Project programs. I applaud your efforts to move more to avoucher model at hud for all housing programs. Earlier you note it the agencying making paroling but the program is in need of more flexibility to get the voucher in the right hands and the right place. Additionally you spoke about the expansion of Public Private partner ships and increasing collaboration of your agency with nothing nonprofits to assist in veteran housing. Stand eager to work with you. Im sure many of my colleagues are as well, with the ultimate goal of getting to zero veteran housing homelessness. I thank youor again for your leadership. Yield back. Thank you. Chair you recognize the gentle lady from utah, ms. Love. Thank you, secretary carson, for being here today. Id like to talk about the moving to work program, which is meant to give Public Housing authorities the flexibility to pursue Innovative Strategies to increase Housing Choices for low income families. Ultimately to encourage economic selfsufficiency. This program now operating at only 39 of the proximate 3,200 housing authorities in the u. S. , was authorized to expand to more to 100 more agencies, more than two year ago through the consolidated appropriations act of 2016. Your department, both under your predecessor and now under your leadership, has moved slowly and cautiously on this directive from congress to expand that. Hud has mitted some of its deadlines. From that viewpoint, some of our housing authorities, looks like hud is trying to add more regulations to a program that was designed for deregulation. Two of my home state housing authorities of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County are desperately awaiting the chance to apply. Its a chance redesign and streamline antiquated hud programs to meet local needs more directly and success. My how can we help you advance the moving to work program so that local agencies can apply for and it hopefully gain that flexibility that theyre seeking . Well you have already helped me by that question because i wasnt aware that was going on, that we were trying to increase the regulations rather than decrease them. Thats the exact opposite of what should be doing. So we will look into that. Can you tell us more generally about your assessment of the moving to work program, has it been successful in moving more people to economic selfsufficiency . As we know, and i think that we can all agree on both sides of the aisle that we should not be in the business of giving people exactly what they need to stay exactly where they are. We should be giving people opportunities to be able to have their needs met and then be able to move out of there and be contributing member offed society and help their communities. Yes. So, can you tell me how successful this program has been in helping people move and be selfsufficient . Yes. First of all, we discovered through the program we have some incredibly innovative people. If we take the barriers out of the their way. Theyre able to see the community they live in and see the opportunities that exist in their community, and therefore they can design the program in order to take advantage of what exists where they are, not what exists in washington, dc. Thats one of the reasons that the 39 programs that exist have done well enough that the expansion was authorized. I think the expansion probably should be authorized far beyond another hundred. It is working and were continuing to accumulate data but it all is pointing in the same direction and that is giving local control as long as you have responsibility. We have to have a way that we measure what theyre doing and make sure that were not having any type of inappropriate activity going on, but as long as we have that in place, this is clearly the way to go. I just have two thing is want to bring up quickly in the minute i have left. According to cbo, federal spending on programs to serve low income families was approximately 744 billion in 2016. To take in couldnt 80 programs throughout the 13 different federal agencies. That doesnt include the states that are helping out. Im trying to figure out how much goes to brick and mortar . A comment you made dish think it was good comment that as a bureaucrat you are going to be a fish out of water and i want you to be a fish out of water but a it should be uncomfortable. We shouldnt be sustaining bureaucrat. We should be sustaining people. And i want you to keep conscious of the fact that thats programs are meant to make sure that we make it to so that people can have an opportunity to get out of the simple. We should be enincentivizing Good Behavior and people who want to get up and most people, people that are there they do. They want to be master of their own life. I agree. Thank you for being here. The time of the gentle lady has expired. The chair expects to clear one more member in the queue. The chair recognize the gentleman from michigan, mr. Trott. Thank you for being here today, and i represent michigans 11th district, Oakland County and western wayne county so were awfully very familiar. Proud of your dedetroit roots and happen to report to you that detroit is making quite a comeback under mayor duggan and i know you visited. Yes. I was very impressed. As am i. So im the last person so im going to end with a couple of compliments. Ive been in congress about three years, and more onthan not the witnesses that appear before us do what we call the old political pivot and gate question they dont like or feel insulted by or is selfserving from the person who is asking the questions and they talk about something else. You have actually sat here all morning and ive been watching in my office and been here in the committee room, you have listened to our questions and done your best to once our questions and question suspect its because youre smarter than most of us andover have been one of the more productive witnesses ive seen in my time in congresses and i want to compliment you on tet approximates choice, i think Bryan Montgomery is the fha committer, served with distinction toward the end of the Bush Administration and will be a great asset for you at hud. Absolutely. Thats talk about the fha program. A gate article from july of this year, written by David Stevens from the mba, and talks about the unprecedented use of the false claims act by hud and the department of justice starting around 2011 under president obama, and false claimed act is a very important federal statute promulgated under president lincoln to deal with profiteers who were supplying the union army and cheating the government. Used to deal with Medicare Fraud and to deal with defense contractors who are ripping taxpayers off, and so im all for the false claims act being used, but are you familiar at all with how its been used in the context of fha lending and ramifications. Very much so. I believe you attorney general sessions could easily solve that problem and the consequence of the improper use of the false claims act item pose outrageous penalties for lenders to immaterial defects in loan originals files on fha loans the consequencers are many lenders left the fha program and the who have stayed, its moe costly for the borrowers. Dueover have any plan to quickly address that problem . We are already addressing that problem. Our staff, along with the doj staff, and were committed to getting that resolved because its ridiculous, quite frankly, and im not exactly sure why there had been such an escalation previously, but the longterm effects of that escalation is obviously providing fewer appropriate choices for consumers and thats exactly the opposite of what who can least afford it. Right. Great. Thats good news on the way limit know the mba has done a great white paper on the issue and commend it to you in terms of seeking out an easy solution that could be put in playing about congressional action. I dealt with hud for many years in my prior life, and i always found its been a real interesting dichotomy. Youve have been attacked for the budget issues that you propose for hud, and some people think that we have unlimited amounts of money here in washington. Theres a debt clock that will tell you differently. Your answer has been a good one, which is im more interested in results than am in funding, and we have to get results for the people that need and it for our taxpayers. In my experience with hud, you have talk about the reforms youre working on. The field office need to be empowered. I agree. Like tip oneills politics, all politic is is local and all housing is local. The more fee field offices can act and focus on results and the department in washington is folk accused on big picture, broad issues, you get better results. I comment that you, number one. Two, i guess this is more of a lecture than a question but in my experience, it was very important that hud try to partner whenever possible and not like under second cuomo i was an adversarial authority between the local and state housing agencies and hud. They should be partners to deliver results and the best results are delivered local and closer to home than here in washington. So i commend that to you as you look at reform and it believe my time has expired but i thank you for your time today and your insightful testimony. Attorney general lynch said cant help you 74 times. Time has expired. The chair now recognizes the Ranking Member for unanimous consent request. I would like to submit to the record unanimous consent to submit the National Housing law projects opposition to the funding in hud, particularly on the 3 billion at cbdg without ox. S lost in Substance Abuse without ox. 9 million bill case, id like to thank secretary carson for his testimony today without once allmer membered have five legislate liveties to submit wherein questions to the witness through the chair for his response. I would asks secretary carson, you please respond as promptly as you are able. This hearing i adjourned. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]