you are up first. independent call. independent call. go ahead. >> caller: yes. i wonder if the good lady could address the issue of the exclusion of jews who were fleeing nazi is during world war ii and prior to that and also if she could discuss how the income immigration was emphasized at the turn-of-the-century and before for the purpose of building up the american workforce. thank you very much and i wish you all the best. >> guest: the jewish immigration prior to world war ii into the other was that the system worked to build up our economy in the united states system. >> guest: you can make a note of that because i will forget. the national origin system

worked against those trying to escape europe certainly in the 1930s and during the war. , but like so much, we talk about the immigration system and how systems work together in other countries. it may depend on whether people come from. -- where the people come from. certainly those people in germany who were trying to get german exitject to requirements and at times germany might require you to have so much money to leave. or you couldn't take as much money out of the country i think is a better way to put it. you could not take a certain amount out. u.s. law required you to not be a public and required you to show so much money to qualify for a visa. someone might be caught between a rock and a hard place when the one rule

disqualifies a visa and beyond that the quota only allowed so many people care year-end if the quota is exhausted, then there is no more lisas until the next month or the next year. >> host: of your wants to know do we address the economy part of this -- >> guest: we didn't really. certainly immigration, immigration did enable economic growth in the late nineteenthand 20th century with industrialization. people came to work in those factories and industries but it is the very subject to economics, we can see the up and down on the chart like that and the boom and bust cycle we will see immigration go up and down when there's an economic depression. >> steve on twitter wants to

know how long is the waiting list for people in central america to enter legally? is it more and ten years if they have a family? can you address this in a general sense? >> it is a state department question but there are some long awaiting things around world and to get a good understanding recommend anybody visit the state department web site. if you search their website for immigrant immigration visas they have a lot of excellent information that walks you through how the process works and links to their visa bulletin which has tables that show waiting times for different countries and i would recommend it to anybody. >> corey in colorado, democratic caller. good morning. >> i would like to ask the guests come as far as our

family can tell my grandparents came from poland and austria in approximately 1915. if the guests could maybe address the situation in europe and in the united states at the time and exactly what type of hurdles my grandparents may have encountered in immigrating to the united states, thank you. >> obviously we are talking world war i time and lots of people wants to get out of the way. from the very beginning, we are talking immigration from eastern europe in 1915, there hurdles have to do not with numerical restriction because it is before is that. first they need to buy a ticket on a train and a ship to get to the united states

and those carriers, we think of them as an airline that those carriers back then have to only sell tickets to people they believe are admissible and if they can raise the money and get the ticket and clear any exit requirements their country may have, as then they would apply for entry at the u.s. ports of entry, ellis island one of the other ports of entry, undergo inspection and unless they become inadmissible since they bought their ticket, be admitted. by 1915, you are traveling in steam ships so we don't have months at sea and people dying of starvation. it is a pretty quick trip. they could make it with the train and the ship probably within two weeks from start to end. >> let's go to 1986, people see as you said the cab and

flow of immigration dating to 1820 at the beginning. here is the spikes of we see in 1986. what were the laws, how were the laws changed? what happened in 1986 with the reform legislation? >> to understand that spike we just need to mention the immigration reform and control act of 1986 which had various provisions in it, both legalization and verification but that site has to do with the adjustment or legalization of a lot of people that were already here and that is why it helps to understand if you were able to take that spike and bend it over to the left and lay it down on top of the previous years because those people physically arrived in earlier years but they legally were admitted under

the '86 act. >> they were here before, but they were able to apply legally for citizenship and -- >> they were able to apply legally for immigrant status. >> and that accounts for that spike that we are seeing. then what happens? because you see it go back to normalize the levels. >> like many programs it opened the window for a time to adjust for certain people who qualified with that were not otherwise admissible. >> and certain amount of time and the window closed? >> i would have to go back to check exactly when it closed but it certainly is going to have a wave of workload that will be digested and processed and closed. >> host: we go to paul in pompano beach, fla.. you are on the air. >> recently we had politicians, republicans and

people on the right say we should only have white europeans agree to this country. was there ever a time in the history of the united states -- >> was there ever a time that that happened? >> we have these people that would solve all our problems that were allowed in this country. >> historical perspective here. >> was it ever aired just that? of course not. and even the charts, we could use the map that is much more colorful to talk about this. if we look at that, it will show the colors, the same chart we have been looking at, just a different display. the blue is people from europe and we will see through most of our history

but we have to look at that as first of all it only starts in 1820 so we have a lot of the immigration prior to 1820 that doesn't come from europe, it comes from africa or the caribbean. that is not reflected their but we can't forget it. similarly even when we look at the nineteenth century numbers and we see all the blue in 1820 and even coming through. a lot of the statistics for that period especially in the early part, really have to do with where people got on the ship. if they got on the ship to sail to america in england they were counted as english even if they had come from poland so we have to be careful to make sure we interpret them correctly. but even there, you can see

there has been immigration from all parts of the world primarily europe until the later part of the 20th century. also didn't count all the immigration, certainly we weren't counting people on our way and borders until the turn of the century so all those numbers we are looking at to not include people who are coming through or through mexico. >> host: the green is the immigration from the americas at you see how it picks up after the 1930s. what is happening here? >> what is happening there is two things. one is it is beginning to reflect more accurately what is going on. we see some of the green on the down slope on the other side, but it will get a change in the 60s.

you see that little change. so in the 50s or just before the amendments of 1965, only about a third of immigration was quoted, those that are largely coming from europe. two thirds are non quota and largely -- i won't say largely -- from the americas already and that is where the numbers may not be as reflective of reality. >> host: what does your office to? the historical research branch? not a lot of agencies have a historian. what purpose do you serve? >> there are a lot of federal historians.

several of them are with small programs like mine. our program recently last year celebrated 25 years of a program. the historical research branch is comprised of three parts. we had set his story office, the historical reference library which is a small library that serves half of our customers are within the agency. we help other staff the work for the agency to find information, find answers and the other half of our customers are public researchers who make an appointment and come to their research in history of the agency or policy. the third is a fee for service genealogy program which began in 2008 and is a way to try to help family history researchers gain access to our oldest records that we still have.

we want access to research purposes. c-span: how does this work? the genealogy program? what are people wanting to know? >> people ask in a different way. the way we interpret it, the way it is organized which confuses our customers, the question first is do you have any records of my immigrant, that is why we set it up with the first step being a search request which is the gee 1041 requests. we have a master index, to find that immigrants and see if we had any record and if so what kind of record do we have. once we determine that we know what to answer, where to tell them to go to find the record. we might be going to the national archives or we might be saying we need to submit a record request. $20 for the index search

request. the fee for the record depends on which kind we find. sometimes we have to tell people to go to the freedom of information program but do you have a record and what kind is the first question and the second is if they come back to less please send me a copy of this record and we find the following and duplicate. >> are people interested? >> we have 5,006,000 year. people are interested but i continually find people who are not aware of the program. >> host: if people are interested in the immigration history of this country, specifically their own, where do they go? >> they can come to the web site and learn about the program because we are not -- we don't have records for every one. we have been looking at that time line a lot. our records, we have records of pretty much a certain

demographic which we described on the web site based on the record that we have. we have all the naturalization since 1906. we have every immigrant admissions since 1924, we may have records of people who came before that but not all people, there is a chart that helps people figured that out on our web site. >> host: marion smith is chief of the historical research branch at u.s. citizenship, thank you so much for explaining to us the 65 act and the history of immigration, as part of president johnson's push for a great society. we appreciate your time. >> join us later for more live events when we bring you a discussion on ukraine russia conflict. the brookings institution will hosts, you see it live at 2:00 p.m. eastern on

c-span. and be with us tonight on c-span when we present the recent new york ideas festival which was co-hosted by the atlantic magazine and aspen institute. here is a preview. >> this has been a cultural explosion with a game of friends. what has that meant in terms of your brand? nice to have the 17 million. how is that -- >> 18. never get your numbers wrong with richard. do you need something like that? >> it is wonderful to have something that is high-quality, very much on brand and it breaks through, becomes a global phenomenon, has huge back end home video attached to it, the other side of the coin, the most pirated show on television. i always say in response to

that, that is the bad news. the good news is 18 million people in the united states are watching it legally. that is mike and i believing in david and dan, listening, seeing their passion, david and dan really are quintessential auteurs and love the product and they know is in their bones, as a brief it and i think for george whose whole life is built around the books, to have been trusted them with the legacy of the series speaks volumes how special they are. >> even though it is very high technology is not giving us the madisons we need to. last year only 27 new drugs were approved, 27 for all

diseases, not just cancer. the business model of the pharma companies is not hard to understand. is the same one used by hollywood. they go out and find interesting projects, bring them in house, polishes them. get them through sensors. the fda and direct case of the drug development, marketing and advertising teams start to work to deliver to the public. it is long and risky and expensive which is why like hollywood, drug companies choose blockbusters. when you think about a targeted medicine, more like those little art films, not a big audience. the problem is it costs the same amount of money to make a little art film as a hollywood blockbuster and get it through the drug process so if you are making a niche drug for cancer is the result is the ends up

being phenomenally expensive and more expensive is the heart rate is to get your insurance company to pick up for it, to pay for it or for an individual to pay for it so the best medicine end up helping the fewest people. >> more live coverage coming up later today and bring your discussion on the ukraine russia conflict. the brookings institution will host and that is live at 2:00 p.m. on our companion network c-span. >> here are the highlights for this weekend. friday on c-span in prime time we will visit important sites in the history of the civil rights movement. saturday night at 8:00 highlights from the new york ideas forum including cancer biologist andrew hassle. on sunday q&a with new york congressman charlie rangel at 8:00 p.m. eastern. friday night at 8:00 on c-span2 in depth with reza asl

aslan. and sunday night at 11:00 p.m. eastern lawrence goldstein on the competition between the right brothers and glenn curtis to be the predominance name in manned flight. american history tv on c-span2 friday at 8:00 eastern. look at hollywood's portrayal of slavery. saturday night at 8:00 that anniversary of the burning of washington and sunday night at 8:00 p.m. former white house chief of staff discuss how presidents make decisions. find our television schedule one week in advance and c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. said 202-6263400 or e-mail us for comments at c-span.org. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> we have more on the 50th anniversary of president lyndon johnson's great society. we looked at its impact on housing from today's "washington journal". this is just over 40

minutes. >> host: we continue our discussion about lyndon johnson's vision for a great society. he pushed several pieces of legislation and all week on "washington journal" we are talking about several of them. we started with the civil rights act, voting rights act, council on education and immigration. right now we want to focus on housing. president johnson's signing into law in 1965 and on the best housing act, part of a series of omnibus bills on housing and joining us for this discussion is kent watkins, the share of the national academy of housing and sustainable development. let's go back before 65. when did the federal government start getting involved in housing for americans, and why? >> actually it was way back in the 1700s. there was more land-use and

development, sales of federal land, surplus land we might call it today but back then it was new land. was appropriated if you will, so they really didn't get into the housing business other than giving land the settlers and other persons could build on it and that left cities and the different kind of housing in the 1800s an 1900s. >> host: what about the idea the federal government needs to provide affordable homes to renters or owners. when did that concept -- winded discussion of that begin and why? >> different words were used to describe acer in median income of people who could afford to live in housing. the mortgages didn't take

place until quite late in the life cycle of housing. probably you begin to get into the >> host: hundreds and mid 1900s and when the depression came, the housing crisis began in a much larger scale and that is where the federal government generally was called in by the housing industry. >> host: what led to johnson's signing the omnibus act? what comes before it? >> there was a backdrop to that, certainly fha was viet leading guarantor of single-family housing, but issues in the 30s and 40s from roosevelt on dealing

with how do you provide some guarantees and reduce risk, that is always the issue how you reduce risks so when you came up into the kennedy administration, a number of task forces were developed that were continued and did johnson and out of that came a certain dichotomy of deal with housing only or do we deal with urban development? so around the 1960s, housing and a number of agencies that had been formed over the years dealing with both were all independent like a lot of mergers that we saw in other areas, this took place around 1961, housing finance agency, an umbrella for number of other agencies so then that morphed into a cabinet department.

bureaucracies like to grow. the cabinet officers are more important, independent agencies in most cases. marymac -- >> host: he creates the housing and urban development department. the had secretary, the cabinet position we know of today. what is had's responsibility? >> again, it has always been this dichotomy between the housing industry and financing that whether it is through secondary markets, which reform over the years, and this whole idea of morrison just housing, we need to have a mechanism by which we deal with goodies as they grow and rural america became urban america and all that was sort of happening by the 60s after

world war ii on and dealing with suburbia, the inner-city is and dealing with how you provide shelter within that environment. >> host: president johnson authorizes nearly $8 billion for housing and rental assistance, rent subsidies for low-income people and new housing projects, grants to help low-income homeowners rehabilitate their property, a small businesses by rehabilitating earning -- urban property. is it a success? >> it was one of many bills that are passed every few years. there is sustainability if you will and pressure from the interest groups to modify and squeak financial system that mitigates this risk providing what we call

affordable housing, and reaching the middle-class and the whole concept of home ownership versus rental housing continues today, to be a third rail issue in some cases. >> host: the federal government housing assistance, 35% or 41 billion households or renters, 4.9 million low-income households receive federal rental assistance, 56% of households are elderly or disabled, 36% of families with children and 14% are located outside metropolitan areas. with 41 million households that are renters, 4.9 million are low income households that receive federal rental assistance. is there enough to support the need to? is there enough housing assistance to support the

need? >> guest: depends on who you ask and that continues to be the raging conversation or debate within the housing industry and the whole urban area itself and congress obviously makes many of those decisions and depending on the politics of that particular congress and that particular administration, it waxes and wanes in terms of how you doing and the tools to do it, and search in short is in my opinion there is always a need to fill gaps and deal with changing demographics in terms of the youth, the elderly, all these things change in terms of who can afford home ownership versus the whole concept of parental. >> host: what is the current

situation like? >> guest: because of a number of pressing factors like student loans have had a big impact on the new generation deciding on whether they can afford more of a debt structure and so we find that making an impact on the kinds of housing that they buy or don't buy. in addition, you have a greater increase in elderly so you get a different debate, do we have elderly in place or do we relocate? how do we move these enormous changes of population around? rental is certainly at the moment if you include foreclosures as a rental property is certainly inching upward and the home

ownership goals and bipartisan more or less never reached above 65% and are going down now. >> host: how much is spent on housing assistance in this country? >> guest: depends on how you define healthy assistance. obviously some people would say that includes all the mortgage tax deductions including second homes and that has been a big boon to realtors, appraisers, mortgage bankers and many others in terms of where the body is and how that flows. the other aspect would be what we call, many are calling workforce housing which is how you deal with persons at the next level and affordable housing perhaps being relegated to what we used to call low

income housing. >> host: we are talking about housing assistance going back to president johnson's vision for a great society. he passed legislation to help out with low income, middle income americans. go ahead. >> since lbj's motivation and inspiration for the great society was to end poverty in the united states, 50 years later after billions of dollars spent, are there more people in poverty today or less? >> host: can you answer that in the scope of housing? >> i'm not a party economist, but certainly again, it depends on which groups are taking the data

and interpreting it. some groups would say such as the low-income housing coalition that there is a greater need. other groups would say we are taking care of this and we are on the right track. >> host: how many federal programs are there for housing? how many agencies that doing it? not just ahead. >> guest: we begin to showcase how many departments are involved. traditionally you thought of hud and the department of agriculture as providing both world and urban housing, a straight cut in the perception of people out there including ourselves but when the recession hit, we then began to be much more aware of what the department of treasury was going to do and what they

could do both through irs in terms of tax credits, as well as parts of the department. you also have the federal reserve taking a much more active role, even though they have been there from the very beginning. so at least those two entities have taken a front seat. had over the years has changed since the johnson days. it did have more urban development in that it had mass-transit, it had water and sewer facilities and both of those were spun off over the years to the department of transportation and epa. so those agencies as well play a role. i would say you can name ten other agencies and the consumer protection agency, that role has to some extent

been taken away from hud. the department of justice also gets an role in housing cases and other aspect so hud is a bit player in some ways but it continues to play a very important role. >> so much to say and so little time to say it. i don't get a chance to watch all c-span programming but all the ones i have seen about this, have been -- your guests have been largely in support of johnson. your caller mentioned the issue of risk, always the biggest thing in housing and the democrats are constantly trying to promote the illusion that they can get rid of risk. they have never been able to get rid of risk. i would like to know if there has been any success

at all in getting rid of any kind of risk that he knows about and whether the big risk is getting someone like lyndon johnson, then create something like the unified budget which passes on the risk to 2007 when all collapses and we have even more risk. the people who were in sharp at the time of lyndon johnson not long dead and don't have to very accountability. >> host: can we trace 2007 to 1965? >> guest: oh yes. every administration, every congress tends to kick the can down the road whether it is housing, transportation, immigration, or many other each is you have been thinking up during this period of revisiting the great society. so i think this was just

another issue, or another phase in public policymakers, attempting may be badly or maybe not but attempting to listen to what the needs of the population was and to experiment with the demonstration cities act which became known as model cities, 1968 housing act which attempted to balance new community development in inner-city issues, home ownership and rental, the argument will never be over. and as the population. >> host: the vice-presidential candidate in 2012 and chairman of the budget committee, chairman of ways and means committee, out with a book that hit

newsstands yesterday. paul ryan, of the way forward, renewing the american idea. he has been on a tour talking about poverty, one of the think tanks, putting out his proposal and ideas. i want our viewers to listen to what he is talking about, involving housing to talk about it. >> with public and private sector working together we can offer a more personalized form of aid that recognizes a person's needs and strength, the problem and the potential. i would start a pilot program called an opportunity grant. it will consolidate to 11 federal programs into one stream of funding to participating states. the idea would be let states tried different ways of providing aid and test the results. in short more flexibility in exchange for more intelligibility. my thinking is get rid of

these bureaucratic formulas and put the emphasis on results. >> host: that was paul ryan in a speech recently in the governing is that it says 11 programs paul ryan is talking about include housing programs, section 8 housing choice voucher programs which provide vouchers for low-income families to elderly and disabled, section 521, royal assistance provides housing subsidies for rural americans, section 8 project base rental system providing eligible tenant families including single persons through newly constructed rehabilitated and existing rental and cooperative apartments and public housing capital operating fronts as well. he wants to consolidate these programs and have it done on a local level based on people's needs. what do you make of what he is proposing? >> guest: you have to put it in the context of evolution

over a number of -- since the great society and before, in fact all sorts of ideas are put on the table and some make it through the legislative history and it has come from both parties which i think is wonderful. at one time because of individual needs u.s. to me earlier, probably as you know about 300 programs and those were put into revenue sharing and other kinds of consolidation programs. this may be the time again. >> host: we're talking with kent watkins about lyndon johnson's vision for a great society. part of that was housing and he signed into law in 1865 v on the best housing act. kent watkins, you have with you today's and. where is that 10 from?

>> guest: this is not the pen the assigned hud into law but it was one of the pens that was used on august 1st, 1968, used by the president, they have a bunch of pens they give out afterwards and so that was a major piece of legislation that was not continued but there were many attempts to keep this conversation going as i say. it is nonpartisan and we have a number of people every month, once a month we have people come on who are academy once a month we have academy fellows and from whatever direction to provide these

kinds -- one of the authors if you will for congressman ryan's legislation came at had a conversation with him and it was a very spirited conversation but a very good one and i think each one that we have ads to that breadth of knowledge that will be replicated on the hill. >> host: he with our guests sunday talking about the civil rights movement and the impact of the war on poverty. if you miss that go to c-span.org. stanley, westborough, mass. independent call. >> thank you for c-span. i am stuck in massachusetts. we call it taxachusetts. a family has to stick together as a clan, upon

there rosa and people are learning how to make cash because all the jobs, engineering is what i was, gone, and you can exist in a state with no state taxes. i don't pay taxes anymore but the property taxes are the killer. >> host: is that the reason housing is not affordable do you think? >> caller: depend on where you are. i can't afford a house. you got to stick together. the kid at 18 will never start his own on the rose. >> guest: not sure how to answer that except you are correct in describing some of the emerging factors that are happening at this place in time and hopefully congress, and whichever administration comes in, will continue to try to deal

with this and not kick the can too far down the road. >> host: charlene, washington d.c. republican column. >> caller: the president in 2016, this topic discussion answer the question that i had in regards to the distribution of affecting world community's end you referenced the 14% are provided to communities outside the metropolitan areas, disadvantaged communities. another biological mother of four kids-i will tell you why i like hud. the mark emmert -- the hud section 8 program allows you to rent an affordable apartment or home in any zoning area of the community in any state. it also allows unique

households to transition as they are trying to to climb or if they are aspiring to become more productive citizens such as transitioning into a different socioeconomic status. would you agree, sir? >> guest: yes. and again, i think this was a bipartisan attempt over the years with lyndon johnson as you pointed out, in 1965, and france supplements. that was one of his ideas to deal with this gap and get away from public housing production and hopefully increase production through the private sector and make up the difference in brands and income through a subsidy but then morphed into a republican program or republican idea. a cross-section 8 that was

based on a housing laws demonstration from europe. all of these factors which are still working with may morph into a new program. i think one of the issues brought up by those who look at the program that the fear that when you consolidate a number of programs, section 8 or something else, that the resulting dollar figure becomes less. in the single program if you want to call it that. the second thing that is raised is what is the mechanism for implementing this? if it is through the state's it becomes a political issue versus the mayors and federal proponents. so again it is of very

useful part of the conversation to begin this in the next couple years. >> host: we go to randy in iowa, democratic caller. >> caller: i have been listening to your conversations this morning and i find it interesting. the words morph and evolve, how this -- how hud has evolve. one thing that struck me was the conversation somebody earlier was talking about kind of laying the blame for 2007-2008 debacle back on the 1965 lyndon baines johnson plan. to me, and republican administrations under george bush, 2002, 2007-2008

debacle, for banking and real-estate deregulation program, the regulation allowed the market to crash. could you comment on that, sir? >> guest: i grew up in dialysis thanks for calling in. i take a long view, contributed greatly to what we have in terms of housing tools and trying to meet the needs of various segments of our population within a changing urban context. i used the word evolve but i think the corollary to that is sometimes, something new under the sun. you smile and look back and you see the same models

being touted as something of new. doesn't make any difference. and he fits the problem, then it doesn't matter what we name it. every hud secretary and their staff and the industry, are very earnest in trying to solve these problems together. and could call that conspiracy but i don't, trying to reach across parties and across the use and i will tell you something else. >> host: kent watkins is chairman of the national academy of housing and sustainable development and has 40 years the development with housing and community -- community related planning, a 400 state regional, local agencies.

the nassau academy of housing and sustainable development. what is that? >> guest: it is an honorary society, lion's club and rotary club. is also an offshoot, not an offshoot but like a model, like the national academy of public administration although it is not chartered by congress. it started during the johnson era when the secretary of hud, bob weaver and bob would and the number of others decided we just sort of have a group of people who honor achievements across the board and we nominate in a very informal way a number of people like henry cisneros or joe vantrone or number of people, frank keating at the american bankers association.

many have gone through hud and still fighting the battle to provide with changing urban development context. >> host: a history of affordable housing, we go to rick in annapolis. >> caller: how are you? >> host: you are on the air. >> caller: mr. watkins, i was in hud for 33 years, came in under the nixon administration. you can thank hud for the problems we are having today in all of our central cities, chicago, detroit. and to justify, a small group with individuals said we have to provide housing now for these 4 blacks so we

went around the country and have all these projects, hundreds of them, thousands of them, controlled by s small group of people. as we speak today, 75% of black americans are living in these help hold projects where there is no education, there are no jobs, no opportunities, and 35% doing well. >> host: where do you get the number 70%? >> caller: look at the situation. and i will say 75%. >> host: kent watkins, housing development. >> guest: it depends, as i say, from where you sit. or attempts in whatever way

they can weather it is under nixon, reagan, joy is bush, clinton or the rest of the administrations, with a you call it hud or something else, there is always going to be a bureaucratic organization for better or for worse that is out there trying to do the best they can. >> host: when did this idea of housing projects, when did they surface? >> guest: st. louis, the famous project there, architects from all over the country saw this as a very good design. aia extoled it when you look at the dedication and

signing ceremonies and look back now, quarterbacking, realized they were not good. but again, things evolved in terms of the demographics and the transportation highway transportation legislation did in terms of relocation and other problems in which hud and other agencies had to pick up on. and the whole issue of desegregation, of race which continues today, of how you deal with this, secretary cisneros came along and this whole line of secretaries and came up with the hope 6 program which involved a number of republican ideas in that. and so many of these high-rise projects were

changed to mixed income and a lower rise and so far, many of those results have been recently good. there is never enough money to change the environment or the neighborhood around it so who knows whether these structures will stand the test of time? >> host: gary says i like the idea of public/private party to where results matter. we need a self sustaining community to be developed. democratic caller, good morning, ray. >> caller: good morning. my problem is they build houses so cheap and charge so much money to sell the house and the way they sell the houses is very crazy because they spend $50,000 on the house and the inspection is so poor, you

pen $150,000 for a house, they spending to $50,000. >> host: you are talking about construction of houses? >> caller: they don't have volumes. it is very difficult. >> host: kent watkins, your thoughts? >> guest: i am not the hud secretary and your point if it is as factual as you make it to be seen as to be one of those many things that all of us sit around a table and have a thousand barriers to affordable housing and successful affordable housing and your input is very valuable and i hope you will continue to express that. >> host: democratic caller kirk in pennsylvania.

>> caller: my experience with affordable housing is it creates poverty. in order to start a family or whatever you have to be viable. you have to have the skills that's where you can earn enough money to support yourself and your children and what affordable housing does is it eliminates that requirement. a similar working class person to put forth passive income that relates to what public-housing people that they would need $1 million in the bank. >> host: kent watkins? >> guest: that has been one of the criticisms over the years about public housing, but i think there are many, many good things, when it was first formed in the 1930s that took care of that disparity and inequality and to some extent dealt with the functionality of the

second world war workers. so again, over time, those ideas change, and hopefully policymakers change with it and politicians change with it. whether there is a time lag, that is where we generally have a gap in the issues you are still talking about. >> host: the headline from yesterday's usa today, $245,340 is the cost of raising a child born in 2013. the report issued by usda since 1960 found housing was the single biggest expense averaging 73,630% of total costs of raising a child followed by child care, education at 18%. tallahassee, fla. republican caller, hi, brenda. >> caller: can the gentleman explain how community reinvestment act under jimmy carter may have contributed

to the downfall on our mortgages and the bank, i am sorry. >> host: i think we got it. kent watkins. >> guest: one of our facilitators at the last academy luncheon was ungentlemanly -- a gentleman undersecretary cam in the republican administration and he went on to become head of the new york regional federal home loan bank board and many of those are very closely tied to to the community banks and to some extent the community investment act, bringing in much larger banks as well and frank keating, another academy fellow that heads of

the american bankers association, both could make a very good argument and have, that particularly smaller community banks during the 2008 recession, on in there and many of their mortgages were not foreclose as a result. we can obviously discuss this for many many hours but by and large, i think the new products that came out from wall street which was very innovative work very hard to understand. the recession to catch up with that. >> host: janice in lansing, mich. independent caller. >> caller: i watch every day but i tuned in late so i am not sure if you already discussed this.

i am 70. i have lived in usda rural housing. their rent was $485 and the company that owned 1,000 apartments in the state gets a subsidy from the federal government for the retail was $735 for one bed room. so they get the difference and we still don't understand why these corporations in housing carmaking millions and millions of dollars from the federal government which is the federal government expense to the people. in a $525y, i live apartment that is small and it is not subsidized. it is nice. i just think it is for the big corporations to get rich, myself. thank you for everything. i do see a need for more housing

projects to be built for seniors. host: do you see that need coming, more housing bill for seniors? affordable housing? guest: absolutely. what kinds of forms there should be. , staying in place has addition to the conversation. innovativet means and i think it does innovative actions on the part of local and state authorities to create more flexible zoning and more flexible occupancy is what we are hoping to see out here in terms of creativity. host: kent watkins.