But some landlords have quietly found a way to make more money each month: They have illegally turned units in their apartment buildings into hotel rooms, said lawmakers, housing advocates and tenants at a City Council meeting yesterday.
Some lawmakers and housing advocates question the quality of the consultants' work.
The speech comes amid a growing outcry from lawmakers and housing advocates, who have questioned the regulatory oversight of the foreclosure review.
Instead, what is likely to happen sometime tomorrow or a short time later, lawmakers and housing groups predict, is that the regulations will be extended, with some tweaking.
But several lawmakers and housing advocates said they remained uncertain whether Mr. Preston, 47, who currently heads the Small Business Administration, would push the federal housing agency to embrace a more assertive role in the nation's housing crisis or would instead serve as merely a caretaker in the waning months of the Bush administration.
Lawmakers and housing advocates say the emerging legislation is just the beginning of a Congressional response to the fallout from a mortgage breakdown that occurred as unconventional loans were extended to thousands of borrowers eager to get into the housing market.
Should the bill win the support of at least 21 senators, it would be sent to conference committee, where five lawmakers from each house selected by the House speaker and the lieutenant governor would try to work through the differences.
Voters do not have to belong to a party to have a say about its candidates, but they can only vote for one party in each category (senators, lawmakers in the lower house, provincial lawmakers, and so on).
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a senior Republican House lawmaker from Florida who fled Cuba as a child, said on CNN that Castro's death changes nothing.
Last month, the humorist Al Franken finished a pilot for CBS -- working title, "Little House on the Hill" -- about four middle-aged lawmakers sharing a house in the capital.
