helping lower to middle class people. republicans, all they want to do is get their rich friends tax cuts and grant all that they can grab, and they don't care anything about people, the working people. host: deborah, they fear for the elaboration. sorry to cut you off, we are short on time. things that we haven't talked about maybe? guest: one of the most interesting things about the survey is the composition of the party. they used to be more similar, now they are more different demographically in terms of where they live, in terms of their education level. as one of the differences we see in politics and it sort of undercuts some of the polarization we see on issues. some of that is caused by being more different people in the parties. that is documented in this report. host: p research -- peerre

search.org thanks for your time. another addition of washington journal comes your way tomorrow morning. right now we take you to an event sponsored by the bipartisan policy center. >> for housing policy. this will be the ninth conversation in our leaders speaker series which is intended to spotlight individuals who understand the foundational importance of housing and have made significant contributions to improving housing affordability in our country. today we are excited to welcome a distinguished guest, acting secretary of the u.s. department of housing and urban development. as most of you know, hud is the federal agency tasked with helping meet american housing needs and strengthening our nations communities, housing and urban development.

it also plays a vital role in enforcing federal housing laws. those of us in the housing field, our guest today needs no introduction. simply put, she has devoted most if not all of her professional life to helping her fellow citizens achieve affordable, stable housing. before assuming her position last month, acting secretary todman served at the agency deputy secretary, the number two official in the department where she focused on both operational and policy priorities. these priorities concluded efforts to increase affordable housing supply and improve the agency's responsiveness to natural disasters. from 20 17th 2021, she with the ceo of the national association of housing and redevelopment

officials, which represents more than 26,000 housing and community development providers. prior to her work, she served at the executive director district of columbia housing authority where she worked to house veterans experiencing homelessness, increase homeownership opportunities for low to moderate income families, and implement multiple development efforts. acting secretary todman's career in public service began in the office of congressman ron lugo who represented the u.s. virgin islands where she was born and raised. so acting secretary todman, i just want to thank you so much for joining us, we are honored to have you. adrianne: my pleasure. >> a little housekeeping before starting the conversation, let me remind our virtual audience that if you have any questions for our guest, you can post them to our twitter/x account using the #bpclive.

you are also welcome to submit your questions to the youtube chat. we will save some time at the end of our conversation to take questions from both our in person and virtual audiences. with that, let's start having a conversation. very interesting background. you were raised in the u.s. virgin islands, and you worked for, as i mentioned in the introduction, the territories first representative to the u.s. congress. how has your background influenced your commitment to public service, specifically to housing policy? adrianne: this is good news for all you 20-something's out there , this is not a path i thought i would be on. i grew up in the u.s. virgin islands. i think the impact that it has on me now being there was i was

in a strong, loving family and when i look back now at my upbringing, i realize all of the foundational things that i had, they are able to thrive. i grew up in a town of 30,000 people, it is very small. there is a fair amount of rural areas as well. adrianne: did you ever think you would be in the cabinet of the president growing up? >> how is that job different

from being the heavy secretary to being the active secretary? adrianne: this is my fifth week in the job, and every morning i wake up and i say to myself what is -- what are the things that only i can do? to creep in space between things that i don't need to do everyday anymore? and so the job as an acting secretary is to be very outward-looking. making sure that we are meeting the rest of the country where they are. the president and the vice president want us to be focused on, that we are working with mayors and nonprofits in a way

that is useful to them and we are also just getting things across the line. >> is the deputy more of an internally-focused responsibly, making sure the wheels in the machine are running? adrianne: that is correct, is considered the coo. i was really focused internally to make sure that our outside posture was strong. it was a p behind the curtain to make sure things are still going well, very outward focused. >> the acting deputy secretary. adrianne: he has done a great job. >> you mentioned the president. in the recent state of the union he devoted nine lines to housing which, for those of us in the policy community, was significant. nine lines in the state of the union is significant. where does housing rank among the administration's overall

priorities, and could you take a moment to describe some of the initiatives the administration is pursuing to improve housing affordable to. adrianne: i was just giddy when it actually happen as a frustrated lifelong --, really waiting for that moment to come to bear. it was great, and it really just demonstrated how important housing is from the very top of this ministration. but it didn't begin with the state of the union. a housing supply action plan which was all hands on deck across the thracian part of usa

treasury, making sure that we were pushing the envelope, even in light of the fact that we didn't have some of the funding that we wanted to have. so it has been very effective and productive. we've seen things like the civil finance bank sharing initiative, we've moved the deadline, allowing for more hsa's to be involved in the program, but we've been working with our partners a treasury to make sure that state and local funds as capital financing at the local level. we have been a very busy administration, and housing ranks one of the top issues we are focused on. >> housing is such a locally driven issue, right? it sometimes can be difficult to figure out what are the federal levels, what is the federal path to help promote supplied, for example? more affordable housing supply

when so much as driven at the local level? >> you're absolutely right, it is a very localized experience. -- the treasury of ministers. so while it is very localized, we still play a significant role in helping agencies. guest: do you see the housing affordability problem as image match between the great demand for housing and available

supply? adrianne: absolutely. it is not lost on anybody who pays attention to how far behind we are as a country and the number of units we need upwards of 3 million. it began just after the great recession where it was hard to get credit, just hard to build. and there was a number of particularly single-family homes on the market to absorb some of the demand. but here we are several years later, and we do see that we have fallen behind. so one of the reasons we have been very intentional with our supply action plan, even in the face of not having all the resources that we need, making sure we are doing everything we can to help the governors. one of the things that i'm particularly proud of is our housing program. we talk a lot about resources, but we also need to be sure that we are creating an environment where housing can be sent.

it is a new program, a very bipartisan way. $85 million that will go to states, localities, others to really incentivize and motivate folks to remove the barriers to building more housing. >> at the center we are very focused on an issue we think is not given as much attention as it deserves, and that is the preservation of the existing stock of affordable housing, because housing, if you look at the numbers, affordability restrictions are going to expire in the coming years. what steps do you think the governor, the private sector,

the nonprofit community can take to increase, to ensure that affordable housing remains affordable? adrianne: we have to take care of what we have. i will begin with the most vulnerable portfolio, and that is our public housing sites. about $70 billion of capital needs that we need, i think that demonstration program has done a great job repositioning. we continued to make sure that we are working with local agencies, but we also have a new program for our privately owned asset housing portfolio, a budget-based program that will help some of those owners addressed some of their long-term capital needs as well. in addition to that, we always partner with our local houses on

the ground on ways to help existing funds to preserve. certainly using our program, using all the programs that we have. >> we try to keep this an acronym-friendly zone, and we also want to welcome our c-span audience who is out there listening to us today. one issue that has really captured my attention and our attention is the issue of rising insurance costs and their impact on housing affordability. insurance costs are going up and up. some insurers are now insuring homes in certain areas of the country. i know you recently testified about this issue in congress.

could you tell us what hud is doing? >> i have yet to meet a multifamily building owner who doesn't talk about the annual operating cost. i have yet to meet a single-family owner, current or first-time who are having difficulties getting insurance that is affordable to them. certainly insurance is not something that fits inside of hud's authority, but we recognize there are things we can do to be helpful. just about a year ago, i did create an internal working group to at least scan the department. we look at the multifamily portfolio, the single-family, the public housing portfolio. we looked at what is the research that is out there that we need to pay attention to, are there things that hud is doing now by way of building more resilient housing that will help reduce insurance costs in months

and years to come? and we have some wins just last week. we announced the new wind and storm damage insurance initiative from our office of housing that we think will help in terms of ways that hud is bringing its authorities to bear. >> so this is a focus. adrianne: absolutely. >> you been working this issue for about a year. adrianne: also things that we can do to meet the moment, many housing owners may not know when and if they can send additional information that increases the amount of funds that hud can provide them. there is a large issue, just like the insurance cost to begin with, and we are going to have a special session on that in the next month or so.

>> great. another important topic, many of us were startled or surprised -- not pleasantly, when the members were released earlier this year that showed more than 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness, an increase of 12% from 2022. it is a complex problem, but in your view, what are the causes of homelessness and what should the? adrianne: it was disheartening to see that increase across all the subpopulations for un-house brothers and sisters across the country, but i would keep in mind that that occurred in january of 2023. since that time, the

administration has done a lot to sort of help localities meet their moments. we've provided a historic new program centered around unsheltered homelessness to help deal with some of the encampments that they are experiencing. we've also provided new funds to rural committees, we help with some of our un-house to youth, and we also deploy the largest amount of funds for those nonprofits that are at the front lines doing the heavy lifting every single day to make sure they have the resources that they need. the overall homeless numbers go down, just to understand their experience is like. unable to sort of share some of that.

>> what are the local communities that are doing good things, eating this job done? >> i think it is a high level of coordination. homelessness seems really simple when you think about someone at the corner that needs help. one of the things that works effectively as when a high level of coordination between those frontline people who are dealing with on housed individuals with the folks who have housing, folks were administering the vouchers, when we experience high levels of coordination and political intentionality, the

president helping folks who are not homeless, but are at risk of homelessness. >> we had a webinar with the board chair of the issue of homelessness and we had the mayor of los angeles, former mayor of houston. the point was made in that webinar that this issue of leadership and this issue of coordination, particularly with mayor parker is that getting everybody working together, a lot of people trying to do good things, but they don't know what

everybody else is doing. >> you have to have one northstar. many, many good leaders who are working hard and their numbers go up, and one of the things that we have found is the social safety net that enveloped the country during the pandemic when it with the child tax credit or some of the checks that folks got from treasury, we saw that folks were able to sustain themselves. so we know what works. we were able to stem a homelessness crisis during the pandemic because all of those supports allowed americans across the country. when those began to sort of peel away is when we began to see this increase.

so while it was disheartening, i don't think it was truly surprising that as we saw that begin to happen, we saw what was happening. that is why we proposed critical steps last year to try to make sure that we were putting our resources out there. >> right. now that we've heard about some of the administrations housing priorities, where do you think the greatest opportunities or -- for bipartisanship around housing and meeting the housing needs of so many people who are struggling, working we get something done? adrianne: housing is one of those issues that is bipartisan by its very nature. everybody needs a home. i'm always very grateful for some of the good ideas that come out of epc to help advance that. there's some great ideas on the hill right now that are

bipartisan in nature. which incentivizes private investments into affordable housing. one of the biggest generators of affordable housing in the country, we also know that there's other good ideas because we know that first-time homeowners are finding it difficult to find that first home. they might have a down payment, they might be ready to go, but they literally can't find a home. those other ideas help kind of kickstarter having some starter homes. as an example, i think that those are the kinds of things that we look to congress to embrace, because we think it will make a difference.

>> we strongly support the afford will housing credit improvement act which unbelievably has 218 -- don't hold me to that -- sponsors, both republican and democrat. and the neighborhood homes investment act, so getting both of those bills over the finish line would make a big difference. adrianne: it is bipartisan in nature and i hope congress will act. >> well let's talk about the demand side. the supply side seems to be where most of the bipartisanship is, but the housing choice voucher program is an incredibly important program, helps more than 2.3 million low income housing's -- households afford the rent and the private rental market. unfortunately, some estimates of about 40% of people after waiting months if not years to get a voucher are simply unable to utilize the voucher.

they can't find a willing landlord. so what can be done? some landlords complain that it is administratively burdensome, it takes too much time, and they have mortgages, they need to pay their own mortgage. so what can be done to at least administratively increase landlord participation in the housing choice? adrianne: there's one in 4, 1 in five eligible households that receive a voucher from the federal government, so we know we need more. as it relates to things that we can do, we have been pushing out the door, making sure that some of the relief that the department received to administer the program years ago

, that we are getting those across the finish line so we can help local agencies administer a program. one example of that in something that has already been done is being able to use someone's federal funding very flexibly so we can get people into units. but we know that the program is very complex. we can do a lot better. those are complications we are having now, like what more can we do? we are quietly beginning to hit a wall, so we have been talking to the landlord community -- announcer: we believe this program here for what we expect to be a pre-house session this morning as part of their 45 year commitment to live gavel-to-gavel coverage of congress. right now tothe floor of the u.s. house .