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National
HUD Secretary: Nation Must Debunk 'Drive to Qualify' Myth and Connect Housing to Jobs
Communities nationwide may inscribe various local meanings to ''sustainability,'' said Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan at the 9th Annual New Partners Smart Growth Conference in Seattle, but their common question is how to ''meet the needs of today without compromising the futures of their children and grandchildren.''
Outlining HUD efforts to ''tie the quality and location of housing to broader opportunities such as access to good jobs, quality schools, and safe streets,'' and to reverse frequent perception of the federal government as ''a barrier to smart growth rather than a partner in smart growth,'' Secretary Donovan said it’s no coincidence the sudden 2008 recession often hit hardest the neighborhoods farther away from transportation, good schools and economic possibilities. ''For all the implications of 'sprawl' – from job loss and economic decline, to alarming obesity, asthma rates and segregation, to the loss of habitat and global warming, to our dangerous dependence on foreign oil – all of them are driven by one fundamental problem: The mismatch between where we live and where we work,'' he told a session moderated by a Smart Growth pioneer, former EPA Development, Community and Environment Division (DCED) head and now District of Columbia Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning.
''Whatever else we do to address these problems, America must find a way to connect housing to jobs.'' With the average household spending over half of its budget on housing and transportation, and with businesses unable to compete globally without workers who can afford to live nearby, the secretary observed, few of the recently numerous market failures ''have been as catastrophic or had as many economic and environmental consequences as 'Drive to Qualify,''' a blunder facilitated by real estate agents and mortgage lenders.
Since ''the beltways and highways that drove investment away from the urban core and connected employment centers outside city limits were built by the federal government,'' the federal government must now rectify the results through a ''New Federalism Attuned to Place.'' President Obama, the secretary continued, has already moved ahead – by signing the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) last year to create jobs and brace the economy, by ordering the first agency review of all federal policies since the early 1980s to see whether they encourage or obstruct ''locally-driven, integrated and place-conscious solutions,'' and by requiring agencies to forge unprecedented-scale partnerships.
One such partnership is the HUD-DOT-EPA sustainability partnership. Rooted in six Livability Principles, to provide more housing and transportation choices and to lay the foundation for a new economy, the partnership reflects the federal government’s determination to speak ''with one voice'' on housing, transportation and environmental policy. The task isn’t to tell communities ''what to do or how to do it,'' but to offer them the resources and tools to help them realize their own visions for achieving the outcomes we all want, Secretary Donovan said, announcing a new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities as “the center-point of all HUD’s sustainability efforts.” Overseen by HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims – a Washington State native, three-term King County executive, strong advocate of Smart Growth, and the department’s ''Designated Silo Buster'' – the office, with $200 million this year, will be led by Director Shelley Poticha, formerly with the Transportation for America and Reconnecting America nonprofits.
Inviting multi-jurisdictional and multi-sector partnerships and consortia to compete for the office’s planning and challenge grants, the secretary urged their regions to build the capacity to integrate not only economic development, land use, transportation, and water infrastructure investments, but also workforce development with transit-oriented development.
Among the office’s new tools, currently under development, will be one to measure where a home is located in relation to jobs, schools and transportation – an ''Affordability Index'' that will affect many HUD formulas to ensure distribution of federal money according to ''the true affordability of a home.'' An expanded Energy Efficient Mortgage and a new Transportation-Efficient Mortgage will be based on the fundamental premise that markets work best when consumers and communities get sound information, and that ''by making information on utility and transportation costs widely available, we can drive a much broader scale of change than government ever could alone, ensuring that we never again foster a culture of 'Drive to Qualify.'''
Committed to change, Secretary Donovan said he sees his department’s entire budget of nearly $44 billion as bound to advance sustainability, intending to use its every dollar ''to put more power in the hands of communities and more choices in the hands of consumers,'' especially those in older industrial city cores, where recession voided 15 years of revitalization gains in just months. ''The sharp decline after years of progress was magnified in minority communities – where African Americans and Latinos have experienced not only a drop in homeownership rates and lost billions in wealth, but also suffered disproportionate declines in public health, educational and economic opportunities,'' the secretary stressed. ''These developments point to a broader challenge facing localities: that you can’t have a truly sustainable community if you promote segregated development patterns and concentrated poverty.''
HUD’s new Choice Neighborhood demonstration will soon commence to prove that neighborhoods can achieve a new kind of sustainability, ''bringing to bear private capital and mixed-use, mixed income tools'' to transform all their housing. As this requires revision of HUD’s fair housing policies, largely unchanged since the 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act, HUD Assistant Secretary of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity John Trasvina, in consultation with Deputy Secretary Sims, is ''adopting a broader definition of fair housing that includes not only the racial makeup of housing, but also its orientation to opportunity – to public transportation and job centers.'' Calling the new approach ''Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,'' Secretary Donovan said he and Deputy Sims have instructed Director Poticha to work with Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development Mercedes Marquez ''toward that end as we develop HUD’s new Consolidated Plan.''
Noting that the ''sprawling of the American landscape was decades in the making – its remaking won’t happen overnight,'' and that he and Deputy Sims bring different perspectives to the issues – he from the east coast and the New York City level; the deputy, from the West and the King County level – Secretary Donovan highlighted their shared viewpoint. ''One thing that drives us both is a belief that when you choose a home, you don’t just choose a home. You also choose transportation to work and to school. You choose public safety for your children. You choose a community – and the choices available in that community,'' he said. ''A belief that our children’s futures should never be determined – or their choices limited – by their zip code.'' 2/4/2010
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