Speaking at the Just Economy Conference on March 26, 2025, Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver spoke of the importance of housing, saying it is one of the top three domestic issues facing the country.
Transcript:
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My name is Emmanuel Cleaver, and I represent the Fifth Congressional District of Missouri – Kansas City, Missouri. It would be sinful for me not to say, and the Kansas City Chiefs. Now they did cheat us out of the Super Bowl. As close as the score was, we thought that officiating is a problem.
Well, it’s good to be here with you people who are doing the real work in this country, and I think at this particular junction in the history of our nation, the work that you do becomes even more significant. These are troublesome times, and my great fear is that one of the top three issues facing us domestically is not going to receive the attention it should, which is housing.
Housing is the one thing that can create some bodiness – homeownership, and my dad is a perfect example. We lived in a shack, moved out of the shack not too far from downtown Dallas, and then moved into public housing. And then my father bought a house because they were tearing down houses to build a shopping center, a strip mall. And he bought the house that was going to be torn down for $2,000 – 3 bedroom house. And then at night, one night, he had the home movers move it to the Black neighborhood where he purchased a home, a lot rather. And so we, we watched my dad over the years and the pride. I mean, nobody had a better lawn than my father. And if you walked by the house 818 Gerald, and you threw a cigarette butt down, your life was in danger. My father had 11 guns. And we all, I have three sisters, we all were, we grew up in fear that somebody would do something to my father’s lawn. And he was proud of it, and he then began to demand that all four of his children the first thing you do when you get out and get a job is to buy a house. And of course, it was a little easier then than it is today, which is in itself, weird. And I want to thank the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and your very capable CEO, and I thank you for giving me a chance to speak here with you today.
There’s nothing going on on the Hill. And I’ve given up billionaires for Lent.
And the just economy conference is where I would like to be. And give me, please, a few seconds to just say, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all the advocates, CDFIs, CDCs and small and minority business development organizations.
You are doing God’s work.
I read in a book, I read in a book that a poor family was living in the country and going to the Capitol to pay taxes. And the woman was extremely pregnant, and they get to town, and they become homeless. They end up staying in a stable.
And so right off the bat, in this book, they start out telling a story about a homeless family, and that’s why I get a little concerned about all the declarations of self-holiness on Capitol Hill.
But that’s another issue. I want to discuss very briefly, if I can, the invaluable impact of community financial development institutions, the impact of CDFI Fund and the work you and I and others are doing in Congress. Let me begin, if I can, by illustrating the impact of CDFIs, and if you can think that since 1994 when Bill Clinton signed the establishment of CDFIs in Congress – he had it introduced in Congress and then signed and it was codified. For more than three decades now, CDFIs throughout this country, in rural, native, suburban and urban communities alike have stepped into the void to provide opportunities that would not normally be there.
And rural America is in as much trouble with housing as urban America. And the great tragedy is that there should be an unbreakable bond between people in rural areas concerned about housing and the urban communities. There are small communities in my congressional district, or in my previous congressional district, where they haven’t built a new house in 20-25 years in the whole town. And somehow we have lost them – I have said over and over and over again that we’ve got to be able to reconnect with urban America for a lot of other reasons that I won’t get into here, but perfect allies on the issue of housing.
And in March 2025, right now, there are 1,400 CDFIs that finance a variety of micro-enterprises, minority-owned small businesses and startups. Oh, I’m sorry, not supposed to say minority.
It’s all over here, so… Collectively, the CDFI industry manages over $222 billion and leverages every dollar invested eightfold, amplifying the CDFI Fund’s impact on local economics and demonstrating its scale in supporting small businesses. And when we see CDFIs functioning in little rural towns like Oric, Missouri, then we know that we’re moving. But that’s not the case now.
During the COVID pandemic, under the leadership of Maxine Waters, the Financial Services Committee worked to ensure that CDFIs as well as MDI and other community financial institutions could provide paycheck financial institutions could provide PPP loans to small businesses, and that the whole PPP loan program was developed walking around in the conference room by Maxine Waters, and ended up being one of the biggest salvations we had during COVID. That’s $12 billion in capital investment, investments and in grants.
Now I believe we can do better. We can do more, which is why I’ve introduced legislation like the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act with Senators Warren and Warnock, and I think this bicameral legislation is the direction we will have to go. The problem is the legislation is probably too good to be approved in this atmosphere. Tragically, it meets the needs of a lot of people, and so we’re not going to likely get that approved.
In fact, what we’re having to deal with now is things that are being thrown in our way to prevent us from doing the work that we’re doing, President of the United States is right now, right this minute, working on defunding CDFI, the CDFI Fund. And I’m not, I mean, I’m not mad at him. I’m serious. I’m not mad at him, because he doesn’t know any better. And, and, and if you grew up as a gajillionaire, and you were required, and the person doing the best, making the most money, was able to sit by the father at the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, you can see where a CDFI is something that’s just alien and and it’s painful to think about where we are. And so there is, right now this gutting of crucial programs. And I’m serious, many of the people who are doing this don’t couldn’t tell you what the acronym stands for. Just couldn’t do it, and they are fighting it.
Yeah, the butterfly effect. It’s very, very interesting, a butterfly effect. And it would go something like a butterfly flies and lights on your shoulder as you’re walking down the street, and you’re trying to brush the butterfly away, and so you don’t see the hole that you step in, and then you fall, and you get up and realize that your knee is seriously injured, and you find that you have an ACL and so then you gotta go to surgery, and then you’re going to miss work for six weeks, maybe eight weeks, and your medical costs run, will run up. I mean, that’s going to rehab every day. All because something at the time seemed so insignificant happened. All of that that you just gone through was a result of a butterfly, and that’s where we are right now.
Every little seemingly insignificant act toward demolishing the agencies that would help create housing is small in the scope of things. Most people wouldn’t, wouldn’t, don’t know what you do. They don’t know what you do every day. And so things continue. You know, you make a statement that you’re going to put terrorists on our two strongest economic partners.
You’re going to invade Greenland and kill the snow. I’ve been there.
I mean, seemingly, it seems like it’s just nothing. It’s the ramblings of somebody who just doesn’t know. But in the real world, it hurts, it prevents people from addressing what I consider to be one of the top three domestic issues of our time.
We ought to be a homeownership society. We’re not, but we should be, and we can be. You know, I want to say to all of you that I believe I have a partner this coming term, or the term we’ve just begun, and I think in our committee, the chair of the new committee and I have had dinner together, which is revolutionary. And we’ve actually mapped out what we’re trying to do, a Republican and a Democrat trying to do something as it relates to housing, and I’m happy about it. And I’m going to continue to need your professional help in trying to get some things done.
But let me just say about you and the work that you’re doing, how critically important it is, and I’m very serious. I mean, the work you’re doing is critically important. And I know I can, I remember the the my first night living in a house with an indoor toilet. I mean, I was, you know, everybody went to bed, I slipped and they just flushed the toilet over and over and over and over again, one of the biggest nights of my life. And so I can appreciate a house with windows. We didn’t have any windows. I can appreciate a house we moved into 405 B, Bailey, unit B, Bailey Street, and there was no organization like this. There was nobody working on CDFIs or anything else for that matter. And it’s changed. It’s changed slowly, and we were actually going up the hill. Unfortunately, we’re stuck right now, but it doesn’t mean that we have to sit still, we have to be noisy, we have to be creative, and we have to get things done and dedicated. And I depend on on on your suggestions and excuse me, and ideas to try to move things in our committee, there’s been a sledgehammer effect, and that is just tear everything down. And somehow it is believed that if you tear everything down, the world would be better. And there’s this tearing down. But in my real life, I’m a United Methodist pastor. I didn’t I actually have a degree. I didn’t buy it, actually.
And so, one day, in my office, and a couple comes in and they said, ‘Look, we may need to get a divorce.” And so I said, ‘You know, what’s the problem?’ I said, you know, a little son, Billy. And so I find out that the woman, the house, wife, she’s takes care of Little Billy, and she takes care of the house and so forth. And so one day she’s cleaning up downstairs, and she hears nothing, the most dangerous sound, if you have small children in the world, she hears nothing. And so she drops everything and runs upstairs. Little Billy has already filled the tub with water, and it has begun to leak onto the floor, and he’s splashing it around and having really nice time. And so she pulls the the stopper out, and the water begins to drain. And she tells Billy. She talks to him and explains water and how dangerous water can be to wood. Anyway, so she goes back downstairs, and she is in one room, and she hears the microwave, door slam, and some screaming, screaming, and Little Billy is trying to get the cat in the microwave, and the cat was not cooperating, so there was a little confusion. And so she grabbed Little Billy. Unlike parents here, uh, she grabbed him and she started shaking him, and she said, ‘Billy, Billy, why don’t you just be a good little boy?’ And he said, ‘Okay, mommy, I’ll be good for some gummy bears. I’d like to get some big suckers and some potato chips.’ And she said, ‘No, Billy, just be like your daddy and be good for nothing.’
Look, all of you are here. I appreciate you having me here. I appreciate the work you’re doing, and when I look at the work that you do every single day. This is a group of people who works every single day, and you’re good for nothing, because there’s nobody out here getting rich off of the work you’re doing. You’re doing it because it has to be done. Housing is a critical need for this country, and you are good for nothing people who are out here trying to save this nation who will improve only if we can put people in housing. Thank you very much. Invite me back.
