Transitional Housing for Recovery in Viable Environments Demonstration Program Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the full committee for his support of this fantastic bill that has been offered by Mr. Barr.
This is pretty simple stuff. There are 2.2 million vouchers. 2.2 million vouchers. And we are talking about a demonstration project of 10,000: 2.2 million total; 10,000 in a demonstration project. We are talking about a small sliver of vouchers that can go to help people who are addicted to opioids, or even other drugs to, say, use the vouchers to move people into transitional housing that are nonprofit. People are making money off this. It is community transitional housing.
Help them maintain sobriety. Teach them valuable job-training skills. Help them get employment. This is just simple common sense. And for people to say, I can't support it because I am taking vouchers away from others, that is bogus. There is 7 to 9 percent turnover in the voucher program of the 2.2 million, and we are talking about a small sliver to help people. This shouldn't be partisan. This is common sense.
So I would ask--and I know that Mr. Barr has worked with the ranking member, and she has been wonderful to work with on a lot of issues and I appreciate her bipartisanship. This is one that I would ask her to take a second look at, Mr. Chairman. If she did, I think she would say it is a small number.
If it works, we can expand it, we can grow it, and we can help more people get off of devastating drugs.
I just want to make one side comment on these drugs. In my communities, it is not just individuals, it is crushing families. We have little kids who are being taken out of homes in out-of-home placement, crushing the budgets of our counties.
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Mr. DUFFY. Let's get this done. If we are going to address this crisis, it is the kind of thought process that Mr. Barr has put into this bill of creative thinking, using resources that we have available to us, to help people who are getting crushed by these devastating drugs.
I know the ranking member cares about those people deeply. And I know she has fought for those folks who have been inflicted with drug abuse. I just would ask her, in this one, to join us and say: Let's do a small demonstration project, just 10,000. Let's work together.
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