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Defunding HUD's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule - Speeches - United States... Page 4 of 5.4' <br />The best way to make housing more affordable is to allow more housing to be built, And the best way to help <br />tow -income citizens find fair and affordable housing is to empower them to live in a neighborhood that meets <br />their needs, <br />The history of Chicago is instructive here <br />In the 2000s, Chicago's city government demolished many of its public -housing facilities without a plan to <br />replace them. <br />Those with the resources and wherewithal to choose where to live moved to places where housing is cheap <br />and economic opportunity is plentiful, But the less fortunate Were relocated to more remote, less prosperous <br />towns, like Dubuque, Iowa, at the behest of - who else - the Department of Housing and Urban Development. <br />In 2008, the city of Dubuquewas struggling to meet the needs of its own public. -housing residents, Yet in <br />stepped HUD, declaring that the city's housing policies would fail to meet the agency's fair -housing standards <br />- and that, therefore, the city would be ineligible to receive federal funding from HUD - unless the local <br />government actively recruited Section 8 voucher holders from Chicago <br />Unwilling to Jose access to federal funding on which the city had come to rely, the small lowan town <br />acquiesced to HUD's demands. <br />This imposed an enormous administrative burden on the city's resource -strapped housing agencies, but t -IUD's <br />real victims were Chicago's public -housing residents who were forcibly displaced to an unknown town 200 <br />miles from the city tney used to call home. <br />Mr. President, unless we pass this amendment to defund the disastrously misguided AFFH rule, this is what the <br />future of public housing in America willlook like. <br />I urge my colleagues to join mein supporting this amendment and reaffirming that low-income families are not <br />statistics to be managed by disfant bureaucrats - they're human beings, our neighbors in need, who deserve to <br />be treated with .dignity and respect. <br />I yield the floor. <br />Permalink: http://www.tee.senate.gov/public/index.cfrn/2016/5/defunding-hud-s-affirmativety- <br />furthering-fair-housing-rule (http://www.iee.senate.gov/public/index.cfmJ2o16/5/defunding-hud-s- <br />affirmativety-furthering-fair-housing-rule) <br />httn://www lee senate tc viniuhlic/inrlex cit'm/sneeche' 2TD=7T716964Ft-AD7D-4'1 Rfl_RS4l- <br />/41- L/ <br />17/i"ti?t11A <br />