Add Missouri to the list of places Juan Castro has visited to learn more about housing issues in America.
A former mayor of San Antonio, Castro has been the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department secretary since last year.
"I've had the chance in the last nine months that I've been on the job, to visit, probably, about 30 cities," he told reporters before the first of two Wednesday afternoon meetings in Jefferson City.
"And the biggest take-away for me is that people want us to work very well, to partner with the private sector and local governments, to get the red tape out of the way and get them a decent, safe place to live."
Castro was joined by U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, who chairs a House Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance and Financial Services.
Luetkemeyer called Castro "a very pro-active individual ... out to try to learn more about where we come from - our problems and our concerns - which are just a microcosm of what they are across the country."
The meetings were closed to the media.
But Jefferson City Housing Authority Director Allen Pollock said they went well.
One of the issues raised in the meetings, Pollock said, was the burden of increasing government regulations - and the problems abandoned housing can cause.
"We're only given 83 percent of what HUD itself says we're entitled to, to run a unit - and I can't be held 100 percent responsible for physical and management improvements, when you're only giving me 83 percent of the funding that I'm entitled to," Pollock said of his agency.
The local Housing Authority also oversees "Section 8" housing for HUD, a program that involves property owners who make their homes available to low-income families, under certain rules and conditions.
"The admin fee that we're supposed to get to operate this, we're only getting 73 percent," Pollock noted.
"HUD pays lip service to de-regulation but, actually, their own study - if you read between the lines - it's going to add more burdens on us."
Pollack noted some communities no longer offer Section 8 programs because of the regulations.
"What we see in the United States today, in many ways, is a housing rental-affordability crisis," Castro told reporters.
"And we want to know how we can do a better job, become more efficient and, also, as responsive as possible to local communities, like Jefferson City, so that, at the end of the day, there are more Americans - whether they're young or they're old - who have a chance to live in a good, safe, place."
He also said government-owned buildings aren't always the answer.
"One of the good news stories over the last couple of decades is that HUD has gotten stronger and stronger about public-private partnerships," he explained. "A good example of that is that, over the last couple of decades, more and more of what we do in housing has been housing-choice vouchers - basically giving somebody a voucher to go out into the private market and find a place to live."
Castro was planning to attend similar meetings in Kansas City after his Jefferson City visit.
Wednesday.