hud had vouchers ready to go to give each of us the units. the vouchers were ready, but if it was not for his leadership, if it was not for the leadership of the board, we would have vouchers just as other developments have had vouchers to move out of the city and county of san francisco. i would like to commend you for your people love. i want to commend you for your strength. stepping up to the plate and looking for those tough situations where you have to get into the trenches

hud had vouchers ready to go to give each of us the units. the vouchers were ready, but if it was not for his leadership, if it was not for the leadership of the board, we would have vouchers just as other developments have had vouchers to move out of the city and county of san francisco. i would like to commend you for your people love. i want to commend you for your strength. stepping up to the plate and looking for those tough situations where you have to get into the trenches. i know that all of you had to be behind him so that he could do what he had to do. -- will not issue vouchers to them. we will step in and work with them and that is what he did. he formed a team and they worked with us. again, i want to thank you. all of you need to be commended for this day and for future days to come. god bless each and every one of you. [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. if i can fight -- up to the podium and also all of her adoring fans and her husband. today, it is my honor and privilege to be able to recognize -- she has worked tirelessly

i would like to urge the board to look into the hud housing. it has become big business for nonprofits to run these operations. i am at one that is not senior housing and the corruption is shocking, frankly. we are trying to bring democracy in. we do not have it right now and we are being bullied. we are trying to involve ross mirkarimi and supervisor jim to get some help. it is shocking to me. -- supervisor camerkim to get se help. there are always vacancies. people age and die. it has never been brought to some people's attention, housing that has become vacant. she has had nothing to do with who comes into the vacancies. it is being done by the management corporation. so please, hud is difficult, very corrupt. i urge you to look into this. there is a reason these lists do not go down. nobody talks about it. if you do a survey, you would have to do it anonymously because people are afraid to speak out. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker please. >> hello, my name is karen mason. my partner turn 60 -- turns 60 next year. it took for six year

are responsible for housing and these federal agencies are providing housing through agencies like hud. >> i have been in san francisco since 1964. and there is a smart meter below mine building. i had insomnia. -- there is a smart leader in my building. i cannot even remember the most common words. i was dizzy all of the time. the stickiest thing is that this is cumulative and slow. after about three months, i was very busy. one time, i stood up from sitting near a powerful -- power pole. you will see people with bright red faces. these are people who have been sitting at a computer for a long time. your brain has no pain sensors in aunt. i found out it was a smart leader -- meter. i don't know the extra meters that are put an end. what will happen to everyone. they might be able to make decisions. i just want you to know what is coming down the pipe and for aid -- and i would like your support for no more small meters. >> i am a san francisco resident. large amounts of the city are being exposed to rf radiation. as a parent, i fear for my child's health knowing that there is scientif

>>supervisor mar: there are currently programs under hud where the mayor's office could have accounting programs. >> i think that that would be very logical. a good place to have that kind of information. finally, just following up on that last point, streamlining some of those programs for post- hospital discharge services, particularly project independence. considering the attempts to streamline something as well toward unaided as the representatives from adult services would like. that is the summary of the report. as i mentioned, there is a lot more detail in here. we can respond to any of these questions after the comments are over. supervisor mar: i wanted to thank fred and sarah for their work on the report and i know it went to many revisions. i really appreciate the hard work and research you have done hopefully it is the beginning of creative solutions and ideas to the growing senior population in our communities. before i get to the number of speakers that have signed up, are there any question that you have for fred or sarah? supervisor avalos: in my neighborhood, ocean view

martin luther king jr., creating hud. this particular parcels are called projects, projects that need to be developed. that is the bottom line. the incentive for america to get it right is in this particular type of opportunities you are able to do more with federal land than city or state land. funds are more able to be achieved because it is more possible to help children, youth, and their families. this particular site is a senior disabled building. once again, america has to help itself. people that live there have to help themselves. in a recession, we have to create bills. we have to create notes. we have to create economic growth. we have to create development to be able to keep the economy going. not only that. it gives the residents the opportunity to learn how to take care of business. it is a long, drawn-out process. i will give you one success story of work done down in north beach. we walked to hell for a heavenly cause. this place was madness. it was not a safe place to be. but as we began to come together a

but we do look at, for example, the affordable housing goals set by hud. we interviewed 46 people on this subject. only two folks said that e affordable housing goals is what pushed frannie and freddie you to do what they you did. the overwhelming majority of evidence that we gathered, documents and witness testimony said it was their drive for profit and compensation, regaining market share, catching up to wall seet that drove their actities. but we did conclude that the affordable housing goals above 50% in 2005 did marginally contribute to fannie and freddie. hay did contribute tomef r losses that, in fact, when you did move the goals above 50%, it did have a marginal back. >> time othe gentleman has expired. the chair recognizes the gentleman from ohio for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i thought mr. thomas' comments on transparency were a very important lesson. i assume you agree that transparency was an important cause here and think a lesson we can take in any market is that investors need transparency about what's going on whether it's c

office, the housing authority, said some of these incidents are occurring in housing authority and hud for free. dcyf, adults and juvenile probation, and legions of nonprofits. we want to try to make sure that we stem the tide of what we think is escalating in our particular area, but we are not alone. we are noticing the uptick of violence. i do not think this is happening simply on a fluke or something randomly. i think it will require a more concerted strategy by us, hopefully through the board of supervisors working with the mayor's office and law enforcement, and more importantly, agencies that are able to get to some of the causality as to why some of this is happening as opposed to always executing a law enforcement response. that package of response needs to be significantly upgraded, and as we start the year with a body count already beginning to take a very scary notice, this is what we have to demand on. that is what i was spending might begin doing. i appreciate your indulgence. with that, i have an in memoriam for those who have now been killed. anthony jones, born july 20

we are two solid blocks of hud housing, which is just as incompetent as reckon part. i have a friend who uses hanc, and i used hanc, so if you close them, i have no cycling, and i am a big recycler. all over san francisco, they are the environment's guardian angels. if you remove hanc recycling center, i will was the possibility of recycling. this will harm the environment. over the years, i have observed the part does no recycling bottles, and you know we do not trust that they will put in a competent to cycling process. scavengers remove recyclables in order to redeem them, thus saving the environment. some at the park are so critical of this, maybe they could pay the scavengers' for sorting the recyclables and split the redemption fee with them. just a thought. community gardens, of course a good idea, but not at this site. recycling is more important for our society and birth. i'm always hearing about these budget issues, but we are going to spend $250,000 on moving a company that is already working and giving the city money. san francisco is number one in recycli

we were speaking here about the community reinvestment act and the affordable housing goals at hud. i agree they fell down in setting mortgage standards. >> i'm asking about the policy that says, we're going to lower the underwriting standards and -- >> let me just take, for example, one reason we found the community reinvestment act didn't have an impact. most of these lenders or many of the subprime lenders, the am ameriquest and new centurieses were not regulated or not fannie or freddie. the worst loans were being made by nonbank financial institutions. they were supported by bank financial institutions. >> sfnt isn't it correct that eventually most of the loans were repurchased by someone, and 50% of the community reinvestment act loans were purchased by fannie and freddie getting a wink and mod from the regulators saying it's okay? again, i drive at the point of your conclusion that the government policies had nothing to do -- they didn't get if your top six. the top six complaints. mr. thomas, do you have a comment? >> yeah. you're right. >> thank you, that's enough. if i get

which outlined his protest hud university for its failure to hire women and people of color. so what an art. that is dear. derek is such an activist. such a man of great humanity and has been a blessing for me to learn from him, to be his friend and his colleague. and we are lucky to have him here at nyu, as arthur david levering lewis. >> fantastic read and very moved by the stores. and i want to know, 100 years from now what do we do to preserve this impact? what will people be referring to, is writing letters? is a dying? what do we do to preserve this? >> i think the most important thing we can do is to preserve the letters already in our mixed. so many people who i reach out to told me about these incredible letters they have. like i spoke too adam clayton powell's first wife who recently passed away. but had an hour-long conversation with her, and she told me about these amazing letters that they wrote to each other every day while she was in new york and he, he was sent to europe to study. she was a show girl and they wrote every single day. and i said, oh, my god. i c

transportation and hud cut 24%. so the cuts are alst consistent to a t across the board. >> i understand what you're saying. >> and it applies to everybody. that's why i say in solving this national crisis that we're in all of us have got to sacrifice and help pay for it. >> mr. chairman, most respectfully, i'll disagree with "all of us are sacrificing." when you get granular and go inside the cuts that you just enumera enumerated, you will find programs that add up to those percentages that impact middle class people and the poor more than they do everyone else. now, let me ask you another question. did the committee -- i'm not into process here. you had the right to exercise, the prerogative, the continuing resolution is neededo be done. those dynamics a s i readily understand. but was there any analysis in the continuing resolution reductions as to just what the projections would be in ss of jobs if in a perfect world this continuing resolution were to become law? >> yes, absolutely. we took the words of chairman

president bush tried to eliminate the program, and with the help of his secretary of hud, mr., we saved it. so this, this is not the first time. so, but this, i think, is -- >> serious. >> more serious and more critical than ever what we're living with right now. >> anyone else? yes. >> one of the criticisms of the program is that it's difficult to measure its -- >> [inaudible] >> and that's not the republicans saying that, that's what the president says in his budget. what's your response to his criticisms? >> well, it's very interesting that -- because it is a flexible program, and we always want to ask the question and we have asked the question, where do you start the measure? because we can talk about, mayor fox can tell you about the 3,000 children underneath the bridge. and if we can get those 3,000 children. that's today. what about next year when we have to look at something? it's very organic. so we're -- and it's a flexible program, and we need to make sure that we have, we address these issues. and did i hear you, mayor warren? >> we have to account for every dime,

>> that's something my colleagues at hud are going to be principally responsible for shaping and i'll leave it to them. we make suggestions in the paper but again the fundamental point is too much of the assistance the government has provided to individuals went to homeowners. and there is a fundamental unfairness in that. and so we think we should alter the balance where the government is going to provide a subsidy in a way that redresses that basic unfairness. >> you have laid out some options. could you just clair prify what the options you want congress to consider? >> i want to start with one observation. if you look across countries, people do this in different ways. and in a sort of simple way you could say there was our model where you had a variety of quite broad-based and very poorly designed guarantees by the government, explicit/implicit. alongside a private market. and you have at the other extreme in lots of countries a system where banks really hold an overwhelming share of mortgage risk. and people tend to think about this about a guarantee or not a guarantee. that's n

president bush would try to eliminate the program, and with the help of his secretary of hud saved it. this is not the first time, but this i think is more serious and more critical than ever, what we are living through right now. >> of the criticisms of the program is that it is difficult to measure its results, and that is not republicans saying that. that is what the president says in his budget. what is your response? >> it is a flexible program, and we always want to ask a question and we have asked the question -- where do you start the measure? we can talk about the 3000 children underneath the bridge, that is today. what about next year when we have to look at something? it is a very organic and it is a flexible program and we need to make sure that we address these issues. >> we have to account for every dime. every dime of this program gets accounted, is spent well. this is a 36-year-old program. no one is doing anything. all of our bridges in our cities this summer if people use them. all this talk that this measure, that measure, talk about jobs -- go talk to a senior citi

i have called quite a few companies, fha and hud. when i bought the house three years ago here, termites were eating up the walls. and the realty company said they could never help me. they said you bought it, it is yours. that is your problem. hey, you go to a lawyer, he says you have to file bankruptcy and all this. they do not want to help you lower your mortgage. i have called the mortgage company that i got my mortgage through, and they tell you we will take it down to 295. i am paying almost $400 a month. the mortgage companies tell you to send paperwork back to them and it will lower your mortgage. they will call you back. all you get are answering machines. leave a message, and it will call you right back. host: let's get a response from our guest. guest: absolutely. it is a problem with the mortgage industry right now. they are unresponsive and do not have anywhere near the capacity to deal with this. it your experience is replicated by tens of thousands of people all across the united states. it is why we are recommending p

a lot of our community action programs do housing, and it may not be hud. we do not condone from or abuse. we aren't actually the first to blow whistles on programs -- we are actually the first to blow whistles on programs that do that. there are other programs, not just community action programs, but other social service programs that have come under scrutiny, what have you. nobody who takes the work we do seriously condones that behavior. there are over 1000 community action programs in the country. how many of them are at risk? i don't mean crooked or embezzling. 24 at-risk programs out of 1100. these can be fixed and trade and you hire new staff. we not talking out crooks, we are talking about people -- we are not talking about books, we are talking about people doing their jobs better. e-mail -- what would be your response to possible cuts? guest: obviously, we will do the best we can, but the adage that has been going on it since the reagan presidency is to do more with less. will happen with these cuts, which will be severe, is that we will be doing

dollars in cuts and community service block grants, $405 million eliminated from their budget, and the hudommunity development program. this is part of the continuing resolution debate which is separate from what the president will be outlining to more for his budget for the fiscal year that is scheduled to start on september 1. welcome to the conversation. caller: freedom of speech and the right to vote, we have neither one. once you license speech, you destroy the democracy. host: thank you for the call. you can join in if you're an independent, a democrat, or republican. lloyd from huntington, west virginia, go ahead please. let's go to ray next in illinois, good morning. caller: good morning. part of this with everything going on in egypt, i think we need to look at the foreign aid to all the countries around the world. and also, i think we need to stop the employee tax so that people have more money to spend. i think that would help. we need to look at things like subsidies, also. host: thanks for the call. here is another twitter comment. twitter.com/cspan is our twitter page. you ca

she created the immunity efforts that brought together education, hhs, hud, and justice department to and healthy communities. when i became lieutenant governor, i took that example to maryland, and we reduced crime in the most violence neighborhoods by 5% in -- 35% in three years. [applause] i was also privileged to work with janet on the federal assault weapons ban. if that statute were still in place, the tucson shooter would not have had as easy access to the guns or easy ability to keep running his deadly activities. i believe this country has got to do a better job on gun regulation and gun control and making our citizens safe. [applause] as my father said, we glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. we make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a clean of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. after my uncle, john kennedy, was killed. my father was devastated. he stayed on for justice for a time, but his heart was broken. all that he ha

guest: he should go to the hud website in his area. if that is too difficult, call ncrc where i work. ask for a council and they will amount. he is trying to -- there is a program to try to help responsible borrowers get to stay in their homes and to have those loans modified. there are lenders who would like to try to help him in the process. host: michigan, david, a democrat. caller: -- tell us -- glass- steagall was enacted after the great depression and it worked well for 50, 60 years. phil gramm pushed real hard for its removal. they were able to do what they did, they were not able to do what they did because of glass- steagall. we got stuck with the cost of their bad investments, something the would not have happened if glass-steagall had stayed in effect is that not true? do you think reinstatement of glass-steagall would help pull the please answer these questions. go in more depth. how glass-steagall

the hud voucher program according to secretary donovan, there are still more than 30,000 veterans, many from the iraq and afghanistan wars, who need these vouchers. so my point is this -- we must be extremely careful at this time as we move forward with this appropriation bill for the remainder of this fiscal year. the economy is showing clear signs of recovery. there's some private sector job growth, an increased confidence among the business community that could lead to more hiring. but unemployment is still 9%. with many long-term and discouraged workers across the nation. state and local budgets are hurting. the safety net is stretched beyond its capacity. while we agree that it's prudent to restrain federal spending, we believe it must be done more thoughtfully than would be accomplished by approve this legislation. we had urge a more strategic approach to reducing reductions rather than the approach drafted in this -- by the republican conference with little input from the minority. now, i will say that i completely agree with the chairman that we want to go back to regular order

that work must be done with leaders of the muslim american community. 13 people were killed at fort hud. to honor their memory, we pledge to use this report and its recommendations as a blueprint to ensure that appropriate reforms are adopted quickly so that the next human ticking time bomb will be identified early and defused before a in another deadly detonation. we believe this report and its recommendations are particularly timely given the dramatic increase in home run terrorist plots against america and americans over past few years. finally, we are submitting this report to the indirector of defense, director of the fbi, the national security director, and others with a request that they respond to our inquiry as soon as possible. we will also send a copy of the report to the president for his review. senator collins. >> thank you. i am very pleased to join senator lieberman in releasing today our investigative report into the events leading up to the fort hood attack. before i begin my formal remarks, i want to thank the chairman for working as a team, as we do on so many issues

caller: hud, department of education, department of defense, every project has to be cut. they have spent $14 trillion in debt. you should inform the american people what the interest of that debt is each and every day of our lives. they have our kids dying in the middle east. they have sent our jobs to china and india. if this government closes down, for 10 years we may get back -- but with them in charge, continuing to us to the brink of oblivion, bankruptcy, catastrophe, what do we need them for? they are only hurting us. they are not helping us. host: mary, republican. good morning. caller: i say shut the government down. shut that down and cut out the medicaid and food stamps. we might be able to fix the economy. there are illegal immigrants in front of me at the grocery store with two carts of food. they broke out of food stamp card and spent $800 on groceries. how do they do that? host: i think mary's gone. rita, lansing, michigan. good morning. caller: good morning. i woke up this morning thinking shared sacrifice. the middle class and the poor are sharing and sacr

transportation and hud cut 24%. so the cuts are almost consistent to a t across the board. >> i understand what you're saying. >> and it applies to everybody. that's why i say in solving this national crisis that we're in all of us have got to sacrifice and help pay for it. >> mr. chairman, most respectfully, i'll disagree with "all of us are sacrificing." when you get granular and go inside the cuts that you just enumera enumerated, you will find programs that add up to those percentages that impact middle class people and the poor more than they do everyone else. now, let me ask you another question. did the committee -- i'm not into process here. you had the right to exercise, the prerogative, the continuing resolution is needed to be done. those dynamics a s i readily understand. but was there any analysis in the continuing resolution reductions as to just what the projections would be in loss of jobs if in a perfect world this continuing resolution were to become law? >> yes, absolutely. we took the words of ch

she brought together education, hhs, hud, and justice department to build safe and vibrant communitiesenant governor i took the example to maryland and we were able to reduce crime in our most violent neighborhoods. i am just three years. [applause] -- in the just three years. -- in just three years. [applause] if our gun laws were still in place, the tucson shooter would not have had the ability to keep running his deadly errands. [applause] i believe that this department and this country has got to do a better job on gun regulation, gun control, and making our citizens safe. [applause] as my father said, we glorify killing on movie screens and television screens and call it entertainment. we make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons. and the violence brings violence. retention breeds retaliation. only a cleansing of society can remove the sickness from our soul. after my uncle, john kennedy, was killed, my father was devastated. he stayed on as justice for a time, but his heart was broken. all that he had worked for seemed torn apart. j. edgar hoover regain his

to get my colleagues at hud will be principally responsible for shaping this. the fundamental point is that too much of the assistance the government has provided to individuals with two homeowners. there is a fundamental and fairness in that. we think there we should balance where the government provides a subsidy in a way that addresses that visit than fairness. >> -- that basic unfairness. to give what the options that you're lying now for congress to consider? >> i want to start making an observation. if you look across the country, people did this in different ways. in the subway, you could say that is our model where you have a variety of quite broad based and very poorly designed guarantees by the government, explicit and implicit, holmes and the private market. -- alongside the private market. and you have an extreme in other countries, banks holding overwhelming share of more rigorous. people think about this is a world where there is a guarantee -- there is not a guarantee that that is not the way to think about it. in the alternative model where bank

. >>> amtrak plans to spend $50 million to study what it calls its gateway project, a new huds riverrsey. building the tunnel would cost $13.5 billion, making it the most expensive transportation project in u.s. history. >>> americans boosted their credit card borrowing in december for the first time in more than two years and according to the experts the signals increase confidence in the economy and an easing of tight lending restrictions by banks. federal regulators proposed that top bank executives delay half their annual bonuses for at least three years. lawmakers blame the bonus system for encouraging high risk deals that led to the recent financial collapse. and a shy baby panda is playing peekaboo. take a look. with visitors at the zoo in vietn vienna. fuhu was born last august. he's avoided meeting the fans, but there he is. it is now four minutes past hour. let's go outside now to al who is also our little fuzzy panda with the weather. >> yeah. i don't think i'm that fuzzy, but i'm glad you think so. let's check your weather. pick city today just happens to be wilmington, d

that work must be done with leaders of the muslim american community. 13 people were killed at fort hud. -- fort hood. to honor their memory, we pledge to use this report and its recommendations as a blueprint to ensure that appropriate reforms are adopted quickly so that the next human ticking time bomb will be identified early and defused before a in another -- before another deadly detonation. we believe this report and its recommendations are particularly timely given the dramatic increase in home run terrorist -- homegrown terrorists plots against america and americans over past few years. finally, we are submitting this report to the director of defense, director of the fbi, the national security director,r ght have prevented his attack were not taken. detecting a lone wolf can be difficult, but in this case, the fact is that both the fbi and the army were aware of major hassan. this is not a case where a lone wolf was unknown to the fbi, and then to the military officials -- unknown to military officials until the strike. that is the tragedy of this case. major hassan was known t

>> that's something my colleagues at hud are going to be responsible for shaping. i'll leave it to them. . be principally responsible for shaping and i'll leave it to them. we make suggestions in the paper but again the fundamental point is too much of the assistance the government has provided to individuals went to homeowners. d there is a fundamental unfairness in that. and so we think we should alter the balance where the government is going to provide a subsidy in a way that redresses that basic unfairness. >> you have laid out some options. could you just clair pfy what a the options you want congress to consider? >> i want to start with one observation. if you look across untries, people do this in different ways. and in a sort of simple way you could say there was our model where you had a variety of quite broad-based and very poorly designed guarantees by the government, explicit/implicit. alongside a privatemarket. and you have at the otr extreme in lots of countries a system where banks really hold an overwhelming share of mortgage risk. and people tend

guest: he should go to the hud website in his area. if that is too difficult, call ncrc where i work. ask for a council and they will amount. he is trying to -- there is a program to try to help responsible borrowers get to stay in their homes and to have those loans modified. there are lenders who would like to try to help him in the process. host: michigan, david, a democrat. caller: -- tell us -- glass- steagall was enacted after the great depression and it worked well for 50, 60 years. phil gramm pushed real hard for its removal. they were able to do what they did, they were not able to do what they did because of glass- steagall. we got stuck with the cost of their bad investments, something the would not have happened if glass-steagall had stayed in effect is that not true? do you think reinstatement of glass-steagall would help pull the please answer these questions. go in more depth. how glass-steagall separated the commercial phase from the public. guest: you're right. i did not want to dwell on that. i can give you a litany o

we looked at the affordable housing goals of hud and they contribute to fannie mae and freddie mac's losses. we look at reinvestment and found it was not a significant factor in some prime lending. clearly fannie and freddie were publicly traded corporations but with implicit government guarantee which became explicit with many subsidies from the federal government and clearly that model was flawed and broken and not to be returned to and we did say i will say a majority and the commission and the dissent by mr. thomas at all that they contribute significantly. we say that clearly. >> are there any specific housing policies you can recommend we look at to help prevent this from happening again? you said this was avoidable. we want to of wood in the future. >> the most important home ownership policy is to make sure we are always setting reasonable mortgage lending standards and anything government backs should be on strongly underwritten loans in terms of quality and that was a major failing that we should never let happen again. dodd frank helped in that regard. i have to give some