WASHINGTON – Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo said today that proposed $2 billion of cuts that the House is considering to HUD’s Fiscal Year 2001 budget would have a negative impact on communities nationwide.

Cuomo said: "As the nation’s economy continues to soar, it seems incredible that Congress would decide against more funding for vital housing and economic development programs. This means that compared to the President’s request, HUD programs will not create more than 10,000 new jobs or provide housing opportunities for more than 130,000 families in need. The budget requested by the Administration for HUD was a modest step in the right direction—one the House should have made a priority to fund."

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies made the cuts last week, significantly reducing spending on HUD programs compared to the request made by President Clinton. The full House is expected to vote on the HUD budget in June. The Senate has not yet acted.

In Chicago, for example, the Administration’s budget request would have meant an additional $38 million for housing and economic development; in Los Angeles, $28 million; and in New York, $122 million. The impact is not limited to large cities: in Savannah, GA, $2 million; in Madison, WI, $1.2 million; and in Santa Ana, CA, $3.1 million in funding will not be provided.

Cuomo said that the spending plan by the House subcommittee:

• Says "NO!" to Community Renewal/New Markets Agreement. Last Tuesday, President Clinton and House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced that they had reached an agreement with Congressional leaders on the New Markets and Community Renewal legislative initiative. Yet, on the very same day as this historic, bipartisan announcement, the House subcommittee approves a budget that cuts many of the elements of that initiative: It fails to provide any of the $37 million for APIC the President had requested; rejects $22 million earmarked to help communities in the Mississippi Delta; cuts funding for "brownfields" redevelopment; slashes funding for housing and economic development in rural communities; and, denies $20 million in funding to assist faith-based and community organizations in their efforts to supply affordable housing, create economic opportunity, promote fair housing and increase the effectiveness of HUD programs like Section 8 rental assistance.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to increasing the supply of affordable housing. A record 5.4 million unassisted, low-income households in this country have "worst-case" housing needs and spend over 50 percent of their income on rent or live in severely substandard housing. But the House budget proposal fails to fund the Administration’s request for 120,000 incremental rental assistance vouchers, including 10,000 vouchers for production of the first new affordable housing units for families since 1996. The expected result will be even more families with "worst-case" housing needs.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to delivery of vital services. As part of its effort to transform itself into an agency that better serves the American people, HUD’s streamlining already has already included significant staff reductions. The Subcommittee’s spending plan would eliminate up to 800 additional positions - 9 percent of HUD’s workforce. Many of these civil servants have 20 or 30 years of experience in the federal service and many of them are the only staff members assigned to HUD’s smaller offices. In addition to the detrimental effects these reductions in workforce will have on HUD’s customers, proposed reductions in overhead spending will impose severe supply shortages and travel restrictions on the agency, significantly impeding HUD’s ability to perform and monitor the very functions Congress has expressly mandated.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to better public housing. Reflecting a bipartisan consensus, HUD has made significant progress in transforming the nation’s public housing stock, correcting the fundamental mistakes symbolized by projects like the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago and reconnecting public housing complexes to the larger economies around them. This spending plan stops that progress in its tracks, failing to provide $54 million in much-needed operating subsidies, $60 million in HOPE VI funds to revitalize distressed housing, and $155 million in public housing modernization funds.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to local efforts to use federal dollars to develop communities. HUD’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is among the most flexible of federal programs, allowing local officials to use federal dollars to meet a wide variety of community priorities, from redeveloping downtown areas to modernizing parks and playgrounds, from laying down water and sewer lines to opening after-school recreation programs, from repairing dilapidated senior centers to assisting local entrepreneurs to start a new business, from sheltering the homeless or abused spouses to rehabilitating homes. The Subcommittee would cut the President’s CDBG request by $395 million, including a $303 million cut to the funding provided directly to local communities.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to homeownership. HUD’s innovative HOME program provides funding to state and local governments, as well as to Indian tribes, to help them acquire, rehabilitate or build affordable housing. Thousands of communities use HOME dollars to promote homeownership, providing homebuyers with down-payment assistance or using funds to repair existing units or produce new ones for purchase. The Subcommittee cuts proposed HOME funding by $65 million.

• Says "NO!" to the homeless. There are more than 600,000 American families in any month who do not have a roof over their heads. The Subcommittee’s plan fails to provide $180  million in funds requested under the McKinney Act to help the nation’s homeless come in off the streets.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to the elderly. As "baby boomers" reach retirement age, our nation is growing older. In response, the Administration proposed an innovative "continuum of care" that would ensure the full range of the housing needs of the elderly – from maintaining their own homes to assisted living – are provided. The Subcommittee not only rejected that proposal, but, notwithstanding the growth of our elderly population, refused to provide some $69 million requested for HUD’s elderly housing program.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to people with AIDS. The nation’s AIDS caseload continues to rise. HUD’s Housing for People with AIDS program provides for the housing needs of this population. The Subcommittee has provided no new funding for the HOPWA program.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to gun safety. The American people want to reduce gun violence. But the subcommittee’s budget plan refuses to fund the Community Gun Safety and Violence Reduction Initiative, a $30-million initiative, funded as part of the Drug Elimination Grant program, to help address the critical issue of gun violence in and around the communities HUD serves. The initiative would fund 1) public education and outreach programs to promote responsible gun ownership and address the hazards posed by firearms; 2) technical assistance and matching funds to implement innovative, performance-driven gun violence reduction programs, and 3) support for state-of-the-art computerized gun-violence tracking and mapping partnerships to provide critical information about instances of gun-related violence to help law enforcement agencies in their gun-violence reduction initiatives.
  
  
• Says "NO!" to the war on drugs. For too many years, public housing residents have been terrorized by the prevalence – and violence – of the drug trade in their complexes. Thanks to HUD’s Drug Elimination Grants for Low-Income Housing, authorities in cities large and small have finally begun to turn the tide in the battle against drug dealers. Notwithstanding their success, the Subcommittee has cut drug elimination funds by some $10 million.

• Says "NO!" to plans to eliminate childhood lead poisoning prevention. The Subcommittee has ignored the government-wide plan to eliminate childhood lead paint poisoning by failing to fund the Administration’s request for a major increase in funding for lead hazard control grants. The HUD program is targeted to housing units that will not be made lead-safe through any other means. Failure to provide the increased funding means that thousands of children will be unnecessarily poisoned.