United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

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United States
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Seal of the Department of Housing and Urban Development
Seal of the Department of Housing and Urban Development
Agency overview
Formed September 9, 1965
Preceding Agency Housing and Home Finance Agency
Jurisdiction Federal government of the United States
Employees 10,600 (2004)
Annual Budget 28.5 billion (2006)
Agency Executive Steve Preston, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Child Agency Click here
Website
www.hud.gov

The United States Department of Housing, often abbreviated HUD, is a Cabinet department of the United States government. Although its beginnings were in the House and Home Financing Agency, it was founded in 1965 to develop and execute policy on housing and cities. It has largely scaled back its urban development function and now focuses primarily on housing.

The department was established on September 9, 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Department of Housing and Urban Development Act Pub.L. 89-174 into law. It stipulated that the department was to be created no later than November 8, 60 days following the date of enactment. The actual implementation was postponed until January 13, 1966, following the completion of a special study group report on the federal role in solving urban problems.

HUD is administered by the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The former administrator of the US Small Business Association, Steve Preston, was nominated to the Position of Secretary of HUD by President Bush on April 18, 2008. He was confirmed by the Senate and his public swearing in ceremony was on June 6, 2008.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Timeline [1]

  • July 1947 - The Housing and Home Finance Agency established
  • July 1949 - The Housing Act of 1949 is enacted to help eradicate slums and promote redevelopment
  • September 1959 - The Housing Act of 1959 allows funds for elderly housing
  • September 1965 - HUD is created as a cabinet level agency by the Department of Housing and Urban Development Act
  • April 1968 - The Fair Housing Act is made to ban discrimination in housing
  • August 1969 - The Brooke Amendment establishes that low income families only pay no more than 25 percent of their income for rent
  • August 1974 - Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 allows community development block grants and help for urban homesteading
  • October 1977 - The Housing and Community Act of 1977 sets up Urban Development Grants and continues elderly and handicapped assistance
  • July 1987 - The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act) gives help to communities to deal with homelessness
  • February 1988 - The Housing and Community Development Act provides for the sale of public housing to resident management corporations
  • October 1992 - The HOPE VI program starts to revitalise public housing and how it works
  • March 1996 - The Housing Opportunity Program Extension Act give public housing authorities the tools to screen out and evict residents who might endanger other existing residents due to substance abuse and criminal behavior
  • October 1998 - Government laws are proposed which would allow local housing authorities to open up more public housing to the middle class


[edit] Operating units

The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building is the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development located in Washington D.C. The building was designed by Marcel Breuer.
The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building is the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development located in Washington D.C. The building was designed by Marcel Breuer.

HUD has experimented with Enterprise Zones - granting economic incentives to economically depressed urban areas, but this function has largely been taken over by states.

The major program offices are:

  • Community Planning and Development: Many major affordable housing and homelessness programs are administered under Community Planning and Development. These include the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), the HOME program, Shelter Plus Care, Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG), Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy program (Mod Rehab SRO), and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA).
  • Housing: This office is responsible for the Federal Housing Administration; mission regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; regulation of Manufactured Housing; administration of Multifamily housing programs, including Supportive Housing for the Elderly (Section 202) and Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities (Section 811); and Healthcare facility loan insurance.
  • Public and Indian Housing: This office administers the public housing program HOPE VI, the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly – yet more popularly – known as Section 8), and housing block grants for Indian tribes, Native Hawaiians and Alaskans.
  • Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity: This office enforces Federal laws against discrimination against minority households, families with children, and persons with disability.
  • Policy Development and Research (PD&R): This office is responsible for maintaining current information on housing needs, market conditions,and existing programs, as well as conducting research on priority housing and community development issues through the HUD USER Clearinghouse.
  • Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae)
  • Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control.

[edit] Programs

The 203(k) program offers low-cost loans to allow low-income participants or nonprofit groups to buy and renovate a house. A scandal with the program arose in the 1990s in which at least 700 houses were sold for profit by real estate speculators taking the loans; at least 19 were arrested,[2] and the situation devastated the housing market in Brooklyn and Harlem and resulted in $70 million in HUD loans being defaulted on.[3] Critics said that HUD's lax oversight of their program allowed the fraud to occur.[4] In 1997, the HUD Inspector General had issued a report saying: "The program design encourages risky property deals, land sale and refinance schemes, overstated property appraisals, and phony or excessive fees."[5]


One of the most successful HUD programs over the years has been the Multifamily Housing Service Coordinator Program. Each year since 1992, HUD has included in its Notice of Fund Availability (NOFA), a specific allocation of dollars to allow sponors and owners of HUD multifamily housing for the elderly the opportunity to hire a Service Coordinator. The Service Coordinator provides case management and coordinative services to elderly residents, particularly to those who are "frail" and "at-risk" allowing them to age in place. As a result, thousands of senior citizens throughout the United States have been given the opportunity to continue to live independently instead of in an institutional facility such as a nursing home. Professional organizations such as the American Association of Service Coordinators provide support to HUD Service Coordinator through education, training, networking and advocacy.

Due to HUD's lending practices, it occasionally takes possession of a home when a lender it insures forecloses. Such properties are then generally sold off to the highest bidder through the HUD auction process.

[edit] Accounting problems at HUD

Susan Gaffney, Inspector General of HUD, testified before Congress in 2000 that she could not sign off on the fiscal 1999 audit because of “the undetermined effects of the conversion problems of the general ledger from the Program Accounting System [PAS] to HUD’s Central Account and Program System [HUDCAPS] during the fiscal year, the integrated state of HUD’s reconciliation efforts and their documentation for the general ledger accounts for the fund balance with Treasury, and the late manual posting of numerous and significant adjustments (some as late as Feb. 25, 2000) directly to the financial statements, for which we lacked sufficient time to test their legitimacy.”[6]

[edit] Criticisms

In 2006, The Village Voice called HUD "New York City's worst landlord" and "the #1 worst in the United States."[5]

[edit] Corruption

HUD was well-known in the 1980s for rampant corruption. Catherine Austin Fitts wrote that when she arrived at HUD as head of operations of the FHA program in 1989, it was comparable to a "sewer" for all the mortgage fraud that had occurred during the '80s: "My favorite description of HUD was to come many years later [in 2000] from staff to the Chairman of the Senate HUD appropriation subcommittee — Senator Kit Bond. When asked what was going on at HUD, the Congressional staffer said, 'HUD is being run as a criminal enterprise.'"[7] She wrote:

"After issuing $9 billion in mortgage guarantees, HUD/FHA was to lose something approaching 50% of the value of the portfolio — a level of losses hard to explain with mortal logic. When my staff approached me with a proposal to bail out a mortgage company so they could continue to lose money for us, I asked why we should spend money to lose more money in a way that would harm communities. After a long silence during which 30 staff members intently studied their feet, one brave soul explained to me that the mortgage bank was owned and run by a major Republican donor. Shocked, I said. 'I am a major Republican donor,' and pointing to my presidential cufflinks that were adorning my French cuffs, 'I got a pair of cuff links. You get cuff links. You don’t get $400 million of federal credit to throw down the drain.' My staff looked at me like I was so naive and clueless that there was no point in trying to communicate with me — better to let me learn the hard way."[7]

[edit] Related legislation

  • 1944 - Servicemen's Readjustment Act PL 78-346
  • 1949 - Housing Act PL 81-171
  • 1950 - Housing Act PL 81-475
  • 1951 - Defense Housing Act PL 82-139
  • 1952 - 550 Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act PL 82-325,
  • 1954 - Housing Act PL 83-560
  • 1959 - Housing Act PL 86-372
  • 1962 - Senior Citizens Housing Act PL 87-723
  • 1965 - Housing and Urban Development Act PL 89-117
  • 1965 - Department of Housing and Urban Development Act PL 89-174
  • 1968 - Housing and Urban Development Act PL 90-448
  • 1974 - Housing and Urban Development Act PL 93-383
  • 1976 - Housing and Urban Development Act PL 94-375
  • 1986 - Tax Reform Act PL 99-514
  • 1987 - Housing and Urban Development Act PL 100-242
  • 1987 - McKinney Homeless Assistance Act PL 100-77
  • 1989 - Department of Housing and Urban Development Reform Act of 1989
  • 1990 - National Affordable Housing Act PL 101-625
  • 1992 - Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act PL 102-550 (L)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Roessner, Jane. "A Decent Place to Live: from Columbia Point to Harbor Point - A Community History", Boston: Northeastern University Press, c2000. Cf. p.91, "Housing Timeline, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development".
  2. ^ HUD Scraps Cuomo Remedy for Harlem Housing Scandal. New York Times (2001-05-11).
  3. ^ HUD: The Horror Movie. The Village Voice (2001-01-10).
  4. ^ Housing Pledge by Cuomo Faces an Uncertain Future. New York Times (2001-04-02).
  5. ^ a b NYC's 10 Worst Landlords. The Village Voice (2006-07-05).
  6. ^ Gaffney's testimony documenting $17 billion of undocumentable adjustments in fiscal 1998 and $59 billion of undocumentable adjustments in fiscal 1999 [1].
  7. ^ a b HUD Is a Sewer. Dunwalke.

[edit] External links

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Agencies under the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization · Office of HUD Administrative Law Judges · Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight · Federal Housing Finance Board · Office of Departmental Equal Employment Opportunity
 United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Seal
Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Community Development Block Grant · Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity · Federal Housing Administration · Government National Mortgage Association · Office of Policy Development and Research · Office of Public and Indian Housing