Cisneros Attacks GOP Bid to Slash U.S. Housing Funds by $7 Billion : Aid: HUD chief, after spending the night at Watts project, pushes his plan to provide vouchers for rent at privately owned apartments.

After spending a peaceful night as a guest at the Nickerson Gardens public housing project in Watts, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros delivered a campaign-style attack Monday on Republican legislation that would slash housing programs and defended his own proposed reforms.

In a speech at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, Cisneros portrayed congressional Republicans as reverse Robin Hoods who take from the poor to help the rich.

The new majority in Congress, the HUD secretary charged, has “a vision of America that is strange and foreign and alien to many of us. It is a concept of American policy that says that ‘if we can just help those at the top of the economic ladder, it will trickle down to the less (fortunate). In fact, we can take the money for helping those at the top from the backs of those who are the poorest.’ And it just won’t work.”

Republicans are seeking to cut at least $7 billion from HUD’s current $30-billion annual budget. Some want to eliminate the department, saying it is responsible for the disastrous condition of public housing in many cities.

Countering those GOP plans, Cisneros and President Clinton in December proposed a HUD “reinvention” to consolidate many programs and save $13 billion over five years.

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A central element of Cisneros’ plan would give public housing tenants subsidy vouchers that they could use to rent privately owned apartments; the theory is that public projects will provide better services under the threat of an exodus of residents.

Both in his Monday speech and at a Sunday night meeting with Nickerson Gardens tenant leaders, he acknowledged that his voucher plan is controversial and raises fears that only the most destitute will remain in public housing.

The secretary spent what he said was a delightful night in the three-bedroom townhouse rented for $150 a month by Nora King, chairwoman of the Nickerson Gardens Residents Management Assn. Cisneros told the nine tenant leaders gathered in her living room that he wants to change “a mind-set of residents who are powerless to a mind-set of residents who have the ultimate power, which is to exercise their choice.”

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The tenant leaders detailed their association’s recent efforts to bring transportation, jobs and shops to Nickerson Gardens and frustration about the lack of recreation for young people there. Two housing authority police cars parked outside as Cisneros spent the night in the small but well-furnished bedroom usually occupied by one of King’s four grown sons.

King, who receives welfare, said she was pleased to be the hostess because “the people who represent us need to go to the people.”

On Monday, Cisneros repeated his ideas to a mainly friendly audience of about 1,500, including many housing program workers and social service experts who had been invited to First AME. During his speech, a group of about 20 demonstrators from the Countywide Alliance of HUD Tenants waved small pink sheets of paper that proclaimed, “No Vouchers. Save Public Housing.” They said HUD should concentrate on improving housing projects, not on having them compete with private apartments.

The secretary carefully remarked that the Los Angeles city Housing Authority runs some of the best projects in the country, despite problems with gang violence and drug sales. Troubles at Los Angeles’ public housing are slight compared to the horrors in the high-rise wastelands of Newark, N.J., and Chicago, he said.

“The transformation of public housing is the issue that causes me the greatest personal pain and sleepless nights,” he said.

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The former mayor of San Antonio, Cisneros has been investigated for possibly lying to the FBI about his financial support of a former mistress. U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has requested that a special prosecutor look into the matter. While Cisneros was speaking about the upcoming fight over HUD budgets, he echoed the partisan themes espoused by Clinton during his visit to Los Angeles over the weekend.

“This is a fight we have to make,” Cisneros said. “There is an awful lot at stake for an awful lot of people. . . . And let me tell you something else. I believe it is a fight we can win.”