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Defunding HUD's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule - Speeches - United States... Page 3 of5 Under the new rule, HUD doesn't replace local Pudic Housing Authorities - it conscripts them into its service. Mr. President, this gets to the heart of the difference between my amendment and the amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Collins. The danger of AFFH is not that HUD will direct local governments and public housing authorities to make specific changes to their zoning policies. It will just threaten them, by tying obedience to federal Community Development Block Grants. CDBG is a federal -grant program controlled by HUD that allocates $3 billion per year to local governments to help them address avariety of community-developrnent needs, including providing adequate and affordable public housing. Traditionally, local officials have been free to use their CDBG grant money according to their community's needs and priorities. But underAFFH,,HUD officials will withhold a local government's CDBG funds unless that local government adopts HUD's preferred housing policies. Predictably, proponents of the rule claim that this will be a collaborative process, with local -government officials in the driver's seat while the bureaucrats at HUD merely provide "support" and "guidance." But the 10 - month track record of AFFli suggests that the opposite will be true In fact, I have already heard from the Housing Authority of Salt Lake County predicting that the costs of complying with AFFH will stretch their already -thin resources, add hundreds of hours of bureaucratic paperwork to their workloads, and -eliminate their autonomy to determine the best ways to provide adequate low-cost housing to their community. Mr. President, the problem with HUD's new rule has noth ng to do. with the intentions behind it In a press release announcing the finalization of AFFH, HUD Secretary Julian Castro said: "Unfortunately, too many Americans find their drearns limited by Where they come from, and a ZIP code should never determine a child's future " I completely agree. There's no disputing that the neighborhood in which a chid grows up affects his educational, social,'and professional outcomes in the future. Nor is there any disagreement that far too many children today are raised in dysfunctional neighborhoods because it's the only place their parents can find affordable housing. The lack of affordable housing is not a new problem in America - just ask anyone who has ever had to pay rent in one the major metropolitan areas controlled by the Democratic Party But neither is the solution. /92-ZG hitn•//www lee senntc> l)=7I)l69(4R-Af171)-41R(1_RS41-)- 1')/1'2/')(11(,