[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.
____________________