Well leave at this point as ben carson is speaking about Housing Affordability challenges. Its a impose jum hosted by the National Housing complex. Many people i havent seen for quite some time enjoyed the meeting with some of the award winners. Now, last week hud hosted a Housing Policy Forum where i spoke about the Housing Market. It is stable, secure and sound. We must remain vigilant and very watchful and anticipate more than react. We must be prudent and practical, continue to maintain responsible ending practices. Wishful thinking cannot be our sole criteria for credit worthiness. As the economy improves we must never ignore the central role of housing in recovery. Nationally we must continue to smooth out the cycles that lead to burst bubbles and foreseeable forecclesiastes sures. We want to avoid anyone going under water or losing their home. There is always room for improvement, more stability, more growth. We still see small fluxuations in the market but dramatic highs and lows seem to be smoothing out and things are becoming much more predictable. The data now shows a reasonably straight and rising line on the upward trajectory. The cycles have become much less dramatic. We are looking for good news and startups and among the many sites of homeowner ship. Homeowner ship rate is 63. 6 . In some states upwards of 70 . First time home buyers make up to 35 of all home buyers in the last 12 months. This good news will continue. The Harvard Joint Center for housing studies project that the United States will add 13. 6 million households over the next eight years. The federal Housing Administration has a strong role to play. Fha has helped more than 46 million americans either obtain mortgages or refinancing. And estimated 40 of all first time home buyers use fha. In fact during the time that we spend here today 4,000 new home buyers will be assisted by fha. So the pace is really quite exciting. Now, this good news hides one story. The Housing Market is becoming a lost dream for many of the millennials. We must create a viable entryway for more credit worthy millennials. First time home buyers feel frozen out and theres new data from showing that 35 of all fha loans were closed by millennials, fha. I worry because there are reports from california from the state lij is layture that only about 13 of millennials buy a home. Why . The high prices of homes escalate out of reach for some. This is especially true in places like new york, washington d. C. , los angeles and so many of the people face very stark choices. Thats a catch 22 for them. Because either you become house poor through potential mortgage if you can get one and sacrifice all of the other aspects of life or you forego a home and have the other necessities of life. These create future of wealth and quality of life in this country. You can understand their frustration and it cuts across an entire age group. In the 1920s hemingways contemporaries were famously called the lost generation. I worry that millennials may become a lost generation for home joaner ship excluded from the American Dream punished as an unintended byproduct of the crisis in 2008. We must be mindful of the situation. We dont want to exclude a generation of buyers or even generations to come. We must do more, find reasonable prudent pathways in the Housing Market itself. Interestingly enough at the beginning of this nation people came here from all areas of the world and they worked extremely hard, not eight hours a day but 12, 16 hours a day, not five days a week, six or seven days a week. Not for themselves but for their children, for their grandchildren. There was always the thinking abou t about the next generation, something we have to start doing again. We know that a First Step Towards homeowner ship is tauof the purchase of a kond minute yaum. It is often step on the homeowner ship ladder and a way of moving up that ladder. We know fha has a central role to play. It is for many first time home buyers and entryway into the Housing Market. Today lets find ways and means for credit worthy first time home buyers to enter the market. One way i direct your attention to the housing opportunity through modernization act of 2016. That act allowed fha under certain circumstances to lower its required owner occupancy for approved condominium it has been reduced from 50 to 35 . Ultimately it will allow for more people including millennials to use fha to buy condos. On wednesday announced it would reduce the debt to income ratio to attract home buyers. Such attraction would help some but fha loans would remain an attractive and powerful option. I welcome this action. In dconcert with our tefreffort millennials will have Game Changing however the federal government cannot be the only solution. We dont want to turn back time. Remember, when in response to the troubles of 2008 the federal government was virtually the only lender for homeowner ship. It was not a good role for fha. Lenders, bangekers need to buy their first home. We need to do more. We need to stop punishing sub skriem crisis. And as we recover from that time we must not overlook those trying to enter the market. It could be true if we set in place the right conditions and correct responses. In my view we can shake the future prosperity of this country by retrieving a lost generation and placing it on a Firm Foundation to future prosperity and recognize that early on in this chris our fore fathers, pilgrims face tremendous odds going across a rugged and hostile land and conquering all of the obstacles. There was something known as 2 can do attitude that characterized america. Now we are in a setting of fiscal austerity and of great need. That means that american ingenuity, that can do spirit must once again immerge, not just complaining and crying, but actually utilizing these incredible brains of ours to come up with innovative exciting and worthwhile invasions that will allow the American Dream to flourish in the future. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. We have got time for a few questions. I appreciate you staying to talk. It is most related to the budget. I think you have said in the past that you dont expect anyone to get kicked out of housing but i think whether the issues of reduction in the housing choice vouchers that cant exist on sufficient funds resident who cant afford rental assistance provided by home that feels like a difficulty to achieve. I wanted to give you how will we sort of achieve folks it will shrink by 67 billion. Very good question. They are actually not the primary mechanisms for rental assistance. Its project based rental assistance and public housing. Given the fiscal restraints we have to prioritize in terms of which things we are going to really emphasize. There are millions of families, 4. 6 million households that are assisted. We want to make sure all of these people continue to be assisted. Thats priority number one. Having said that some of the other things have been particularly looking at the ability to leverage in order to provide more units. The rental assistance demonstration, a perfect example of that being able to create a lot more units than we are losing on an annual basis and wiping out, you know, the backlog of Capital Needs at 2 same time and investing the local community in the well being of those neighborhoods and projects. The old model was the government came in with a boat load of money and said bill this facility for veterans. Bill this facility for low income people and off to the next project. Thats left us with a lot of housing infrastructure problems. The government comes in and seeks and facilitates the Public Private partnerships. Thats lot more money than there is in the government. And at the same time looks out for the next generation. Those are the kinds of priorities that we must put in place. Thank you. The next question, more than 50 communities have ended veterans homelessness. Other communities are on a path to do that as welt. The Housing First model shows potential for ending homelessness for many other groups. Do you plan on building on this model on this momentum and if so, how . Absolutely. As far as veterans are concerned strong relationship with the va and hud from the street to the main offices and theres been a lot of other groups also who have focused on veterans homelessness to the point that its been reduced by 47 . You cant gloat about that but significant progress is being made. Our homeless assistance grants requesting t 2. 75 million. It grants 255 million will support over 350,000 in homeless shelters. So we are looking at that homelessness has been reduced from 800,000 to just over 500,000. Again, nothing to gloat about but we are moving in the right directions. I think its an excellent they are likely to end up in the emergency room some time in the course of that year and be admitted to the hospital. A one week stay in the hospital costs more than it costs to house them for three years. We have to utilize that appropriately. We also must add housing second and housing third. Housing second means we need to diagnose the reason we are in that situation and housing third means we need to address that. Many our of members have questions about future fha policy including poing mortgage final rule, multifamily transformational and resolving concerns about the use of the false claims act. Are you contemplating in either Single Family or multifamily at this point . Yes. But i cant talk about him in this forum. There are a lot of interesting things that need to happen. You know, looking at some of the impediments to lenders getting involved, false claims acts and things like that. You know, clearly the rules are important. We are making sure that people understand what the rules are and Single Family and multifamily. No question about that. Those are things that push people out of the market. We are looking at those carefully, trimming those out of the way only looking at material effects. It allows people to gain their certification and recertification online. And that also integrates a process that kicks out, you know, nonmaterialer r errors. Those will make a huge difference. We are looking forward to having a new fha commissioner in place and strengthening the whole infrastructure of our Organization Running it much more like a business. I think everybody will find it much easier to work with. And i will not attempt to look around the audience of who that commissioners might be. I want to go back and talk on something that came up in the election. Certainly there was a sense of rural voters feeling as an expression of dissatisfaction and being abandoned. Both u. S. Td. U. S. D. A. And hud, h you see huds response in rural americas Housing Needs . Well, we actually have a very strong relationship between hud and department of agriculture, re recognizing that we have joint interest and we are looking at ways to those interests in a most efficient way. Interestingly enough there are more severely effected people in terms of housing in our metro poll tan city areas than there are in rural areas but it doesnt mean they are any less important. We are going to continue to focus on that. You have your 515 program through the department of agriculture. You have our various housing and rental asasistance programs. We are looking at ways to streamline and maximize the effectiveness of that so we can help more rather than less people. Great. Thank you. Houd plays several important roles. It supports programs to discriminate housing practices. It imports anti discrimination requirements. Are you planning any changes to huds enforcement to the Fair Housing Act . The Fair Housing Act of 1968, which was modified in 1988, i think it is one of the most beautiful pieces of ledge islation that we have ever crafted in a bipartisan fashion. I will not only look to make sure that we continue, but to enhance everything we can to make all housing policies fair for every group in our society. Thank you. Thank you. So i want to come back to a point you mentioned about rad and the success we have seen in the rental area demonstration process. You have been vocal of support of partnerships. I think the Housing Trust fund are essential elements to this recapitalization. So how do you envision the provision of rad to work within that sort of conflict of cuts to those programs . Well, actually rad itself, we need to lift the cap on that so that we can spread that much further and much faster. We see that it works. You know, i have been on a National Tour in a number of cities and seen whats happening with those programs. Its a winwin situation. We also have the ability to modify some of the programs in order to make sure that we enhance those Public Private partnerships, the use of low Income Housing tax credits and other incentives in order to bring in much more revenue. And its not just a matter of bringing in the revenue. Its a matter of bringing in the interest. There are a lot of things that we are doing that are outside of the budget. For instance, the creation of vision opportunity centers. These would all be privately funded. You the children, what do you want do in there . Youll get about five answers but there are about a thousand answers. We want people to show them the other 995 answers and how you get there. We want to bring in child care. So many of the young women get pregnant. Their education ends and thats problematic. But we want to give them a chance to get the ged, masters degree, associates degree. Teach their children to take control of their own lives. Mentor ships have been shown to greatly reduce high school dropouts. Using those and teaching people basic skills. When i was in high school i knew basic skills. I knew how to use a bill press and they dont teach kids that stuff anymore. We need to give people basic skills once again so we are going to be doing all of this through private funding. Theres an enormous amount of good will in our country. It needs to be focused and directed. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate you being with us. We look forward to more conversations in the future. Join me in thanks secretary carson. Thank do you so much. This weekend book tv is live from the lit fest in chicago. Coverage starts on saturday at 11 00 a. M. Eastern with author Mary Dearborn with earnest hemingway, a biography. At 1 00 by Michael Eric Dyson with his book, tears we cannot stop. And at 4 00 sidney blunethal. On sunday our coverage continues at 11 00 a. M. Eastern with Heather Ann Thompson and her book blood in the water, the prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy. At 2 00 sex and the institution. Sex religion and law from americas origins. Then at 3 00 trey radel, a true story of true politics, money, madness and finger food. At 4 00 author thomas ricks with church hill and orwell, the fight for freedom. Watch our coverage of the 33rd annual Chicago Tribune printer row lit Fest Saturday at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on book tv. Sunday night on after words new America President and ceo ann marie slaughter examines in her book the chess board and the web strategies in a networked world. She is interviewed by former white house chief of staff in the Obama Administration from 2013 to 2016. What would strike me was that we knew there was a world of states and state threats. Today if you think about north korea or iran or some times china and russia that world of state to state relations is still very very important and i think of it as the chess board world. Its the world of how do we essentially beat our adversaries and we think about a move and we try to anticipate what move they are going to make. That world is there and its very important, but equally important is what i call the world of the web. That world of criminal networks including terrorists but also arms traffickers and drug traffickers, the world of business, which increasingly big Network Supply chains, Global Corporations and the world of organizations. I think of all of those as increasingly important actors but we dont have strategies for how to bring them together. Watch after words sunday night at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. President trumps nominees to be the next white house budget and Regulatory Affairs and federal Emergency Management administrator testified before the Senate Homeland security and governmentaal affairs committee. All were asked multiple questions about the president s 2018 budget proposal. This is about two hours