[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 96 (Thursday, July 1, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1463-E1464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           DOING GOOD FOR HUD

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CHAKA FATTAH

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 30, 1999

  Mr. FATTAH. Mr. Speaker, I commend the following article to my 
colleagues from The Philadelphia Inquirer on the Department of Housing 
and Urban Development's activities in Philadelphia.

            [From the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 1999]

                           Doing Good for Hud


For a bureaucracy, it's a startling move: Sending skilled professionals 
  out of their offices with sweeping orders to help people. They are 
 ``community builders'' in what HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo calls ``an 
                          urban Peace Corps.''

                            (By Maida Odom)

       John Carpenter drives past rubbish-filled lots in 
     Philadelphia, wondering if there's some way to get them into 
     the hands of owners who would clean them up.
       Cynthia Jetter solves problems and investigates complaints 
     from advocates for the disabled--the same people who last 
     month protested outside her employer, the U.S. Office of 
     Housing and Urban Development in Washington.
       And Michael Levine, a career Washington bureaucrat now in 
     Philadelphia, is getting to see some of the social programs 
     he helped design. ``When you come in and meet people in a 
     situation, you realize no program in itself is going to solve 
     the problem,'' he says.
       They are executives who have left their offices--
     ``outsiders'' with connections, insiders now on the street.
       They are HUD employees, members of a unique group of two-
     year ``fellows'' called community builders. Handpicked from 
     inside and outside HUD, these special workers--about 900 at 
     81 offices nationwide, and 26 in Pennsylvania--have an 
     extremely broad mandate: Do good.
       Jetter was a HUD employee who left to work at the 
     Philadelphia Housing Authority and then returned. Carpenter 
     formerly headed a Community Development Corp. Both are 
     assigned to the Philadelphia office, as is Levine.
       HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who announced the program in 
     March of 1998, dubbed these ``fellows'' an ``urban Peace 
     Corps''--knowledgeable professionals from private industry, 
     social services, other branches of government and elsewhere 
     temporarily added to a HUD talent pool that has been winnowed 
     through years of budget cuts.
       Karen Miller, who heads HUD's mid-Atlantic region, which is 
     based here, helped write the ``community builders'' job 
     description.
       ``What has been expected of HUD's staff was 
     schizophrenic,'' she said. HUD bureaucrats were the ``cops'' 
     who guarded public dollars, she said, while at the same time 
     they were expected to offer technical assistance to the 
     people being monitored.
       ``The Secretary [Cuomo] separated the two roles,'' she 
     said. ``The great majority [of HUD employees] are still 
     defenders of public dollars,'' involved in awarding 
     grants, moving applications through the system and 
     monitoring spending.
       ``Community builders are the ones who go out and work with 
     the community and help them do what they want and need to 
     do.''
       In almost two decades as a Washington-based bureaucrat, 
     Levine saw himself getting further away from his personal 
     career goal ``to go out and help communities develop.''
       As a HUD executive he was writing programs and evaluating 
     projects. Eventually, there were few fact-finding trips into 
     the field to see firsthand what he was planning and 
     administering.
       About half the community builders are like Levine, people 
     who had worked inside HUD and are now getting a chance to see 
     their work in action.
       Being in the area of welfare-to-work for about a year has 
     been eye-opening, he said. Over that period, Levine has 
     arranged for more than 700 people--public-housing managers 
     and tenant leaders--to get special briefings explaining the 
     new welfare-reform laws.
       In Washington, he had administered and written a program 
     offering public-housing tenant councils $100,000 grants to 
     develop job opportunities. ``They didn't want to spend the 
     money for fear of getting into trouble,'' Levine said.
       Now, as a community builder, he's helping bring together 
     public and private sources to create computer centers at 
     public housing developments. ``A computer center is a place 
     where children can go after school, where adults can get the 
     literacy they need,'' he said.
       ``When I ran that program in Washington I didn't see the 
     money being used that way. You get a different perspective. 
     You don't realize the nuances.
       ``It's not like I learned any big new things to shock me. 
     But things are much clearer now.''
       Before she met Jetter, Nancy Salandra, project coordinator 
     for the Pennsylvania Action Coalition for Disability Rights 
     in Housing, generally found herself fighting to get HUD to 
     listen.
       Jetter has been ``a terrific person to work with,'' 
     Salandra said. ``What she says she's going to do, she does.
       ``She has the knowledge; she has the understanding of 
     housing; she has the understanding about HUD; and she 
     understands how the system overwhelms people.''
       In addition to meeting with groups that usually come to HUD 
     with complaints. Jetter is bringing together people who work 
     on housing for veterans and disabled and homeless people. She 
     also is trying to organize a tracking method to keep up with 
     who needs services and who's receiving them.
       ``We need to track the impact of programs [and] track 
     housing, and we can better address the needs of the 
     population.''
       Jetter worked for HUD for 14 years before taking over as 
     head of resident services at the Philadelphia Housing 
     Authority. She left there for a research project at the 
     Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. in New York. Last fall, 
     she rejoined HUD as a community builder. When Jetter left 
     HUD, she thought she'd never go back. For most of her years 
     with the agency, she felt it was growing farther away from 
     the people it served.
       People ``were numbers,'' she said. ``This is a big step for 
     HUD to take people in from the outside. And the response has 
     been overwhelming. P.R. for HUD is a big part of it. We go to 
     every meeting we can, try to be a visible as possible. After 
     a meeting, people are almost knocking you down to get your 
     card.
       ``We used to be the ones who said `Gotcha!' Now people can 
     talk to us before they get into trouble.''
       Carpenter, who formerly headed the New Kensington Community 
     Development Corp., where he won praise for clearing and 
     reusing vacant lots, joined HUD last summer. In this job he's 
     been able to pull together people he could not have assembled 
     in his old job.
       For example, a group of American Street area residents and 
     representatives of a community development corporation there 
     were

[[Page E1464]]

     working together earlier this year, hoping to obtain funding 
     to design projects for property acquisition and housing 
     preservation.
       Carpenter, according to Santiago Burgos, director of the 
     American Street Empowerment Zone in North Philadelphia, was 
     able to help people working in the area ``think through to 
     design a project to consolidate those goals.'' Carpenter 
     helped them see that they needed money for pre-development 
     and environmental testing. Their improving planning made it 
     easier to identify and get funding, Burgos said.
       In addition, Carpenter brought in the right people as 
     advisers and consultants, Burgos said, and ``shortened the 
     learning curve'' for the community people, moving things 
     forward faster.
       Such projects are close to Carpenter's heart.
       ``Frankly, it's one of Philadelphia's biggest disgraces--
     what happens to vacant land once the building is torn down. 
     The city essentially abdicates responsibility. They do not 
     clean it, they do not maintain it, they do not cite the 
     owners for not maintaining it.
       ``For a developer driving by here, the first gut-recoiling 
     reaction is, `Why would I even build here if the people who 
     live here tolerate this? What would they do to my store? What 
     would they do to my business? ' ''
       Although the problem is vast, Carpenter said--in the city 
     there are about 40,000 vacant buildings and 30,000 vacant 
     lots, most privately owned--he thinks it can be tackled.
       ``Having the HUD seal of approval gets people to listen to 
     me,'' he said.

     

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