Aiding More With Less, HUD Chief Says

Housing Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr. said Monday that “we are taking care of more people by far, with much less money” than when he took office in 1981.

Pierce defended before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee the Administration’s $19-billion spending request for the Department of Housing and Urban Development for fiscal 1989, up slightly from the current $18.6 billion.

The only member of President Reagan’s original Cabinet who remains in office, Pierce has presided over a dramatic decline in HUD’s spending authority--the ceiling for separately approved appropriations--from $33.4 billion in 1981 to a proposed $13.6 billion next year.

The secretary said he did “more with less” by getting rid of big, costly HUD programs of questionable effectiveness and streamlining others inherited from previous Democratic administrations.

He said HUD is assisting 4.3 million needy families this year, contrasted with 3.3 million in 1981. Actual outlays over the same period have slowly increased, from $14 billion to a projected $18.6 billion this year.

Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.), the subcommittee chairman, questioned the projected costs of a new HUD program of rental subsidies for poor families that are intended to give recipients greater freedom to choose where they will live.

Proxmire said the new system of direct cash vouchers cost more than $200 million annually above the present certificate system serving the same number of people.

Pierce said the long-term differences in costs should be negligible once the shift to the new system is completed.