Barney Frank

Barney Frank is the U.S. House Representative for Massachusetts' 4th congressional district, serving since 1981. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

“Affordable Housing – for Whom?” - 4/28/2008

Transcript

BARNEY FRANK:  It’s a constant frustration for those of us trying to get affordable housing bills, that there was this overwhelmingly negative reaction, “Oh, don’t build it near me.” And we built a lot of affordable housing. Massachusetts took the lead and people like Mike Dukakis years ago, and it’s private/public housing. And it was built with the requirement that it be affordable for low income people for 40 years. Now, the 40 years is starting to expire and we have this problem because a lot of this housing that was built with restrictions on who could live there 40 years ago is now eligible to go on the market. And it turns out we have a new problem. The kind of people who 40 years ago said, “This housing is awful, don’t put it near me,” now want to move into it. And they want to displace the poor people and outbid them. And one of our problems is to try and put some legislation through so we don’t lose that.  But I do want to note, the very same types of people, you know, lots of them in 40 years, some of them are no doubt dead, but the ones who aren’t that complained about this housing in the first place, have now found it so desirable that our problem is they want to outbid the poor people for the housing that they didn't want built in the first place.