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For Immediate Release
June, 03 2009, 10:50am EDT
Contact:
Renee Willis, Vice President for Field and Communications,media@nlihc.org,Ph.,202-662-1530 x. 247
NLIHC to Testify Before Congress on Section 8 Voucher Reform Draft Bill
WASHINGTON
National Low Income Housing Coalition
(NLIHC) Deputy Director Linda Couch
will testify Thursday, June 4, before the House Financial Services Subcommittee
on Housing and Community Opportunity on the proposed Section 8 Vouchers Reform
Act (SEVRA).
Advocates
see enactment of the bill, still in draft form, as critical to stabilizing and
updating the voucher program. NLIHC strongly supports many of the bill's
provisions, including one that would improve the formula HUD uses to distribute
voucher renewal funding to the public housing authorities that administer the
program, and one that would simplify the rent-setting process and ensure that
families are encouraged to earn additional income. The bill would also improve
the home inspections process, voucher portability, the screening of voucher
applicants, and fair market rents.
The bill
also would authorize 150,000 additional vouchers for the coming year, to begin to address the years-long
waiting lists for vouchers found in most parts of the country. NLIHC, along
with other national housing groups, has called for the authorization of 2
million additional vouchers over the next 10 years.
NLIHC
commends the efforts of the Subcommittee Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA), lead
sponsor of the draft bill, and the other members of the subcommittee, for their
efforts to strengthen the program. "The draft bill Section 8 bill under
discussion today is testament to the Subcommittee's commitment to the
nation's housing programs," Ms. Couch will testify.
This new
draft bill is very similar to the version of SEVRA that passed the House in
July 2007, H.R. 1851, during the last session of Congress. The Senate version
of the legislation, S. 2684, did not make its way out of the Senate Committee
on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, and the bill stalled.
In 2005,
NLIHC hosted a summit of advocates, residents, public housing authorities,
policymakers and others with a stake in the voucher program to develop a
description of needed reforms, many of which are included in the draft bill.
Hearing Information
WHAT: House Financial Services Subcommittee on
Housing and Community Opportunity hearing, "The Section 8 Voucher Reform
Act"
WHEN: Thursday, June 4 at 10 a.m.
WHERE: Room 2128, Rayburn House
Office Building
WHO: Linda Couch,
Deputy Director, National Low Income Housing Coalition
Additional witnesses have not yet been announced, but will be posted https://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/hrhc060409.shtml
The National Low Income Housing Coalition is dedicated solely to ending America's affordable housing crisis. Established in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, NLIHC educates, organizes and advocates to ensure decent, affordable housing within healthy neighborhoods for everyone. NLIHC provides up-to-date information, formulates policy and educates the public on housing needs and the strategies for solutions.
LATEST NEWS
Database of Court Filings Shows ‘Startling Pattern of Abuse’ by Federal Agents Against Citizens in Minnesota
A new database of sworn affidavits filed by the ACLU shows masked agents detaining citizens based on race without warrants, ignoring IDs, and pointing weapons at them.
Feb 05, 2026
Federal agents deployed to Minnesota by the Trump administration are systematically violating the rights of US citizens and lawful residents, according to more than two dozen sworn affidavits made available this week as part of a class action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security.
The suit was filed last month by the ACLU of Minnesota and partnered law firms, which said that as part of President Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge, "masked federal agents in the thousands are violently stopping and arresting countless Minnesotans based on nothing more than their race and perceived ethnicity, irrespective of their citizenship or immigration status, or their personal circumstances.”
The case was launched by three plaintiffs, which include 20-year-old Mubashir Khalif Hussein, a Somali-born US citizen whose brutal arrest and detention was caught on video in December. He was placed into a headlock by masked agents and brought to an ICE office, where he said he was left in shackles for an hour and a half before being released miles from his home in the freezing cold.
The plaintiffs called it just one example of a "startling pattern of abuse spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota."
On Thursday, the online legal policy journal Just Security published a searchable database of the 29 sworn declarations filed so far as part of the case. Nearly all of them were filed by US citizens, while a few others were permanent legal residents or had pending legal status.
The statements detail numerous allegations that agents violated their basic constitutional rights, including by detaining them without showing a warrant; targeting Somali and Latino individuals based on their appearances; ignoring identifying documents that could prove their legal residency or citizenship; restraining them violently; and pointing weapons at them during searches.
Last year, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration's claim that when deciding whether to stop someone as part of "roving patrols," agents had the right to consider certain factors, including “the type of work one does,” a person’s use of Spanish or accented English, or their “apparent race or ethnicity."
While critics described it as an invitation to blatant and unconstitutional racial profiling and invasions of privacy, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that the practice should not prove burdensome to those legally in the US: “If the person is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter,” he said.
Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security, said that the “sworn affidavits show how, on the ground, this is simply not how ICE operates.”
"They did not identify themselves, and they did not present a warrant. They just opened my car door and started yanking me out of the car. I kept saying over and over that I was a US citizen."
One 33-year-old Latino citizen who was born in the US was driving to Menards on January 10 when he suddenly found himself boxed in by two cars at a stoplight. Before he knew it, he said agents were banging aggressively on his windows and one had started pointing a gun at him. When he put his vehicle in park, he said the doors opened automatically.
"When the doors unlocked, the agents did not ask me anything, they did not identify themselves, and they did not present a warrant. They just opened my car door and started yanking me out of the car," he said. "I kept saying over and over that I was a US citizen."
“Once they did get my seatbelt off and finally [pulled] me out of the car, they threw me to the ground and pinned me,” he continued. “They were pulling on my arms so tight to put on the handcuffs. They ripped my jacket, and it was torn up. My wallet fell on the ground. I was still repeating that I am a US citizen. I repeated it over and over. They never asked for or looked at my identification.”
The agents hauled the man into their car and began driving him around and interrogating him for about 20 minutes. He said the first question they asked him was his name.
"It seemed if they were going to violently arrest me before even looking at my identification, that they should have known who I was," the victim said.
Agents eventually realized they'd been searching for another person with the same name and birthdate. They drove their captive behind a warehouse, where nobody could see, and released him. But another agent had taken his car from the intersection. An agent said he'd only give it back if the agent could scan his face, which he did.
“I felt traumatized. My arm hurt, I had bruises from the handcuffs. They were so tight that half of my hand was numb for a few days. I guess it stopped the circulation to my hands while I was handcuffed. I had cuts on my face and hands,” the victim said. “Since this happened to me, I have to pass through that spot every time I drive to work. I keep going back to it and reliving it in my mind.”
According to the database, at least five other US citizens, lawful residents, or legal asylum seekers also claimed in court that they'd had weapons pointed at them by agents during their stops.
Two other US citizens and one lawful permanent resident detailed being subject to physical force during stops.
One 53-year-old Somali man, a US citizen since 2008, said he was physically grabbed and dragged from his car, handcuffed, and pinned against the vehicle by masked agents.
"One officer pressed his knee into my back," he said. When I screamed out in pain, another officer put his elbow into my neck, and one of the officers yelled at me, ‘Shut the fuck up, son of a bitch!’ One of the officers responded, ‘Why don’t you go back to your country?’"
"I believe that I was stopped solely because of the color of my skin and our appearance, including wearing a hijab."
One 22-year-old Somali-American citizen who was born in Minnesota said that on January 21, five agents hopped out of their car with multiple guns drawn as she was on her way to work.
She said they demanded to see proof of her citizenship, but rejected her valid ID, claiming it was fake. They demanded to see her passport, which US citizens are not required to carry under US law. The agents told her they did not believe she was a US citizen because of her “accent.”
"I believe that I was stopped solely because of the color of my skin and our appearance, including wearing a hijab," she said. "It was clear that the ICE agents did not know who I was when they stopped me. I had not violated any traffic laws, and the vehicle I was driving was registered to my mother, who is a United States citizen."
It's one of at least five cases in the database in which agents dismissed proof of a citizen or legal resident's status.
There have also been many other documented instances, including some caught on video, in which agents have detained a citizen or legal resident or refused to let them go because they believed the person's “accent” did not sound American.
All 29 of those who filed affidavits in the case have alleged unconstitutional racial profiling.
One 25-year-old Somali man, a US citizen born in Atlanta, said a group of masked agents accosted him and his mother while he was shoveling snow.
He said they were joined by a pair of unmasked men who appeared to be livestreaming and helped the agents to box him in. He later identified one of them as a right-wing YouTube influencer named Ben Bergquam.
Even though the vast majority of Somalis living in the US are citizens, he said the agents and the streamers were laughing and referring to him and his mother as "illegal aliens."
"I was unsure if I was going to be seriously injured or killed."
At least 12 people in the lawsuit have filed sworn testimony stating that agents forced them to stop while they were driving.
In one case, a Hispanic US citizen said that after following him for a few blocks, agents put on their lights and "rammed" his car off the road.
"An agent came up to my window, asking if I was a citizen. I was furious. I told them I was a citizen and they damaged my car," he said. "Instead of apologizing, they demanded that I produce documents to prove I was a US citizen. I was too angry. I told them again that I was a US citizen and I didn't have to prove it to them."
He said the episode lasted 45-60 minutes, with agents repeatedly demanding his ID, name, and place of birth. Eventually, he says, they confirmed his citizenship by taking photos and videos of him and scanning his license plate.
He said agents told him they would pay for the damages to his car, but that they drove away without providing any insurance information.
"Even though I am a United States citizen and I was carrying proof of my citizenship with me, ICE agents didn't believe me," he said. "I felt intense fear and shock. I was unsure if I was going to be seriously injured or killed."
The affidavits were filed as part of the case Hussen v. Noem, which claims that agents have violated Minnesotans' rights to equal protection and against unreasonable searches and seizures. A hearing is scheduled to take place later this month.
“The government can’t stop and arrest people based on the color of their skin, or arrest people with no probable cause,” said Kate Huddleston, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “These kinds of police-state tactics are contrary to the basic principles of liberty and equality that remain a bedrock of our legal system and our country.”
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"Do the right thing: Get off of corporate welfare and pay all of your workers a living wage with good benefits," the democratic socialist senator implored Walmart's multibillionaire owners.
Feb 05, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday launched an investigation into how corporations including Walmart—which hit $1 trillion in market value earlier this week—benefit from tax breaks in Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act while many of their workers can't make ends meet.
Sanders (I-Vt.) informed Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon and the heads of Kroger, Dollar General, and Dollar Tree in separate letters that he's probing how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) passed by the GOP-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last year "has negatively impacted the health and well-being of workers at large corporations... and how it has financially benefited the owners and executives of these multinational conglomerates."
"This legislation made the largest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history to pay for $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% and over $900 billion in tax cuts to large corporations," noted Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
"As you know, Walmart is the largest corporation in America with over $680 billion in revenue, $19.4 billion in profits, and more than 2 million workers," Sanders wrote in his letter to McMillon. "Walmart also recently became the first retailer ever to hit $1 trillion in market value. It is owned by one of the wealthiest families in America, the Walton family, which has become over $348 billion richer since 2017 and is now worth more than half a trillion dollars."
"Yet, despite the enormous wealth of the Walton family and these huge corporate profits, Walmart pays wages so low that many of its workers rely on public assistance to survive," the senator said. "At Walmart, tens of thousands of low-wage workers are forced to depend on SNAP to feed their families and Medicaid to get the healthcare they need—all paid for by US taxpayers."
"Walmart pays wages so low that many of its workers rely on public assistance to survive."
Sanders is asking the heads of the companies in his probe to "disclose how much they expect to make from the Republicans’ tax breaks and whether any of these savings will be passed along to workers."
“It has never been acceptable that incredibly profitable companies like Walmart—owned by one of the richest families on Earth—pay their workers starvation wages, forcing many of them to rely on programs like Medicaid and SNAP," Sanders wrote to McMillon. "But it is even more unacceptable when those benefits are being slashed so that corporate executives and billionaires like the Walton family can become even richer.”
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Current models "assume the future will behave like the past, even as we push the climate system into uncharted territory," said the lead author of a new report that's based on input from dozens of experts.
Feb 05, 2026
In a report published Thursday, UK experts highlighted the "growing gap between real-world climate risk and the economic analysis used to guide policy, supervision, and investment," while also warning that because the "window for preventing catastrophic warming" is narrowing, ambitious action "cannot await perfected models."
Various scientific institutions concur that 2025 was among the hottest years on record—and the ongoing failure of governments across the globe, particularly the Trump administration, to enact policies that would significantly cut planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels is pushing the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C and 2°C goals for this century further out of reach.
The new report from the University of Exeter and the think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative, titled Recalibrating Climate Risk, incorporates the expert opinions of 68 climate scientists from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
"Our expert elicitation reveals a fundamental disconnect: Climate scientists understand that beyond 2°C, we're not dealing with manageable economic adjustments," said Jesse Abrams, lead author and senior impact fellow at Exeter's Green Futures Solutions, in a statement.
"The climate scientists we surveyed were unambiguous," he explained. "Current economic models systematically underestimate climate damages because they can't capture what matters most—the cascading failures, threshold effects, and compounding shocks that define climate risk in a warmer world and could undermine the very foundations of economic growth."
Abrams said that "for financial institutions and policymakers relying on these models, this isn't a technical problem—it's a fundamental misreading of the risks we face, which current models miss entirely because they assume the future will behave like the past, even as we push the climate system into uncharted territory."
Current economic models miss the mark on climate risks, warning that catastrophic tipping points and extreme weather could crash the global economy, far worse than 2008.As said many times before delaying action will be far costlier than cutting emissions now.www.theguardian.com/environment/...
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— Ian Hall (@ianhall.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 12:46 AM
Communities around the world are already contending with devastating droughts, fires, and storms—and, as another report from researchers at Exeter and the UK's Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFOA) pointed out last month, "above 1.5°C, we enter the danger zone where multiple climate tipping points may be triggered, such as the collapse of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, permafrost melt, Amazon dieback, and changes in ocean circulation."
The IFOA report "warned that when cascading and systemic risks are taken into account, warming of 2°C by 2050 could result in a 25% hit to projected GDP, rising to a halving of projected economic growth between 2070 and 2090," BusinessGreen editor-in-chief James Murray reported Thursday. "Similarly, a report from consultancy Boston Consulting Group calculated a third of the global economic output could be lost under a scenario where temperatures reach 3°C above preindustrial levels by 2100."
"The studies stand in stark contrast to some mainstream economic models that have suggested warming of 2°C or more will only reduce projected economic growth by a few percentage points—analyses that have been seized upon by opponents of climate action to argue that decarbonization policies can be dropped or delayed," Murray noted.
Abrams told the Guardian that some current economic models "are saying we'll have a 10% GDP loss at between 3°C and 4°C, but the physical climate scientists are saying the economy and society will cease to function as we know it. That's a big mismatch."
Your periodic reminder that the economic models that suggest climate change will knock a couple of percent of future GDP - models that are used widely by governments, investors, and businesses - are almost certainly complete garbage. www.businessgreen.com/news/4525211...
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— James Murray (@james-bg.bsky.social) February 5, 2026 at 7:08 AM
Laurie Laybourn, a Carbon Tracker board member and executive director of Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, cited another recent report that provides a bleak picture of the current moment and what lies ahead.
"As the UK government's landmark security assessment of ecosystem collapse showed last week, we are currently living through a paradigm shift in the speed, scale, and severity of risks driven by the climate-nature crisis," she said. "Yet, beyond this report, there has not been a corresponding paradigm shift in how regulators and government as a whole assess these risks."
"Instead, they're routinely underestimated if not missed entirely, meaning many regulations and government action are dangerously out of touch with reality," she continued. "This threatens disaster when that reality catches up with us. So, it's critical that policymakers change course, providing clear signals and guidance to markets that these risks should be priced accordingly, rather than downplayed."
And, as the experts emphasized Thursday, it's not just policymakers—investors are also still relying on "flawed economic advice," said Carbon Tracker founder and CEO Mark Campanale. The result is "widespread complacency... with many investors viewing climate scenario analysis as a tick-box disclosure exercise."
"Until the gap between scientists and economists' expectations of future climate damages is closed and government bodies act to ensure the integrity of advice upon which investment decisions are made," he added, "financial institutions will continue to chronically underprice climate risks—meaning that pension funds and taxpayers will remain dangerously exposed."
Hetal Patel, head of sustainable investment research at Phoenix Group, the UK's largest and retirement and savings business, said that her firm "supports the report's call for a more robust and coordinated approach to climate‑risk modeling. Underestimating physical risk doesn't just distort financial analysis and investment decisions, it underplays the real‑world consequences that will ultimately affect customer outcomes and society as a whole."
The new report stresses that addressing the "fundamental disconnect between what climate scientists understand about climate impacts and how these impacts are represented in economic models" would require "research investments spanning years," but rather than simply waiting for better modeling, decision-makers "must proceed on the basis of precautionary risk management, physical climate science, and observed impacts."
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