http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3216
One more time Barney Frank is caught pimping subsidies for Corporate America, and while it didn't pass this time HUD is currently reworking its PETRA proposal.
Here is a quote from the PETRA bill. It’s intent is to:
provide the opportunity for public housing agencies and private owners to convert from current forms of rental assistance under a variety of programs to long-term, property-based contracts that will enhance market-based discipline and enable owners to sustain operations and leverage private financing to address immediate and long-term capital needs and implement energy-efficiency improvements.
Along the way, tenants’ rights will be trampled, since tenants could not longer seek redress from the government through their public officials — because the government would no longer own the buildings.
Stop PETRA.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5593036834815438356
Preservation of Federally Assisted Housing: Public Housing. In July, the House Committee on Financial Services passed out H.R. 5814, a major public housing bill, introduced by Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA). The bill would authorize the Administration’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, reform HUD’s processes for demolishing and selling of public housing, open public housing up to more creative financing, allow public housing to convert to service enriched housing or assisted living, and authorize a pilot program to train public housing tenants in health services (see Memo, 7/30). Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Representative Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) were instrumental in the development of this broad piece of legislation. Similar public housing legislation has not been introduced in the Senate.
Choice Neighborhoods is a HUD proposal to revitalize entire high poverty neighborhoods that include distressed housing. While the program did receive funding for FY10, it has not been authorized and is currently operating predominantly under HUD’s own guidelines. The House’s legislative proposal would make many improvements to the CNI program.
The bill does not include HUD’s largest public housing preservation proposal: the Preservation, Enhancement, and Transformation of Rental Assistance (PETRA) proposal. HUD’s PETRA proposal was unveiled just before a May 25 hearing on the proposal (see Memo, 5/28). PETRA would provide public housing agencies greater access to private resources by authorizing increased housing subsidies for PHAs that convert their units from the current subsidy systems to the new PETRA subsidy. These increased subsidies could pay loans on private debt, which would help PHAs meet their capital needs. HUD believes that much more could be leveraged from the private market than can reasonably be expected from Congress through annual appropriations. The May 25 hearing raised many serious concerns, most notably the potential to lose public housing to private investors if PHAs could not keep up with debt payments. HUD is currently reworking its PETRA proposal.
