Department of Housing and Urban Development - Obama Presidency Oral History

...and owners to try to preserve HUD -assisted housing. I put together th...

...in which I really began to understand HUD 's programs. And actually, we ha...

...were properties, then, when I went to HUD , I oversaw. So I think it was one o...

...for me.” And so I ended up, from the HUD side, overseeing that program that ...

...something I worked extensively on as HUD secretary. I was very proud of my wor...

...I was running the multifamily part of HUD , but it was something, certainly, tha...

...the first few weeks of starting at HUD , Michelle [L. Robinson Obama] came t...

...Michelle [L. Robinson Obama] came to HUD . It was part of a tour she did of th...

...agencies to inspire them. And like HPD, HUD —a huge share of the employees ar...

...of the employees are Black women at HUD . And this was in the lunchroom, th...

...[Robert C.] Weaver was the first HUD secretary. No, I'm sorry. Brooke...

...story. Were you offered the job as HUD secretary during that interview? No...

...for fifty years, about you becoming HUD secretary? [Pause] What does an...

...Senator Menendez suggested that HUD had “been sitting at the kids' table...

...for that to change. When your tenure as HUD secretary started in 2009, to wha...

...started in 2009, to what extent had HUD become involved in trying to resolv...

...crisis? I think it is fair that HUD had been left out of a bunch of th...

...Jackson had been secretary. He left HUD , I think, with six months left in th...

...were at Treasury, rather than at HUD . There were som...

...But there was definitely a sense that HUD was on the outside and that Treasur...

...as well. When you first arrived at HUD , I wanted to ask about the way th...

...of infrastructural resources affected HUD 's ability to get involved in th...

...and Freddie loans—but obviously, the HUD secretary is in charge of the FH...

...a little bit the question of whether HUD was at the grown-up table. I thin...

...as secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and [unclear] Office of Management an...

...a little bit about the ways that the Department of Housing and Urban Development was still dealing with the aftermath o...

...Just to give you some background, HUD has this very underappreciated role i...

...[Federal Emergency Management Agency], HUD is really the second most importan...

...think we made a lot of progress. For HUD in particular, HUD had essentiall...

...lot of progress. For HUD in particular, HUD had essentially become, in some ways...

...works is, Congress makes an allocation. HUD then decides how much to send to eac...

...governments design those programs, but HUD has to approve. The program tha...

...of work in the administration, but at HUD in particular, to try to both remov...

...one of my first trips down after I was HUD secretary, I had dinner with Moon [E...

...had been mayor of New Orleans and then HUD secretary for President Carter. So ...

...Of all of the issues that you, at HUD , had to work on in an interagency way...

...okay. I read that during your tenure as HUD secretary, you walked aroun...

...DC, one night a year as part of HUD 's point in time assessment, whic...

...to connect the work you were doing at HUD to real people in ways that wer...

...I was in retail. When I went to HUD , I was in wholesale. And at OMB, I wa...

...that was really important to me at HUD , but also at OMB, was finding ways t...

...I think I went to forty-six states as HUD secretary. And it would really recharg...

...to my lawyers and my program people at HUD , basically, their heads exploded. The...

...from a legal point of view, to having HUD steer that program fully? Ver...

...some of the decisions that you made at HUD . With something like the point in tim...

...you tried to change the culture at HUD in a similar way? Absolutely. And ...

...me. I quickly came to New York, given HUD was going to have a big role in th...

...that this wasn't just going to be HUD , this was going to be overseeing th...

...get a foreign national a job at HUD . But we worked it out. He got a job a...

...at the Dutch embassy and was loaned to HUD , and together, we created Rebuild b...

...everyone who was involved—the people at HUD , at Rockefeller. We ended getting ...

...financial reform and regulation than in HUD 's purview. Yes, but I would also sa...

...didn't necessarily have, and because HUD is a huge—I mean, FHA is ...

...I used to have lunch once a month at HUD , at that now-famous dining set tha...

...I found out I got the job at HUD , we were living in Brooklyn. My wif...

...as secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and the director of the Office o...

...both in your capacity as secretary of HUD , as well as in your capacity a...

...playing out, from my vantage point as HUD secretary, was, we could litigat...

...a meeting in my conference room at the HUD building. Tom Perrelli was my partne...

...Administration, FHA, which is part of HUD , which is a government-guarantee...

...important to me during my time at HUD was to ensure that the LGBTQ+ communit...

...redefined “family,” for the purposes of HUD housing, to include same-sex partners...

...answering a lot of questions about what HUD does, and what we'd done, and why we'...

...more a personal reaction than it was a HUD secretary reaction. And the reporte...

...in all of this work we were doing at HUD , so I think he was incredibly excite...

...Were there specific steps you took at HUD to prepare for sequestration, and wer...

...the housing market? So, you ask about HUD , but obviously, as the budge...

...sequestration very specifically at HUD , to answer your question; because i...

...planning around that, but I felt, as HUD secretary, and especially as budge...

...I was in retail; when I went to HUD , I was in wholesale; at OMB, I was i...

...Secretary Donovan. When your tenure at HUD ended, you were th...

...you were the second-longest-serving HUD secretary in history, and I wanted t...

...yes, still are the second-longest HUD secretary in history. Given that, ...

...very long—historically long—tenure at HUD . Yes, you're asking me to pick amon...

...of OMB, President Obama visited the Department of Housing and Urban Development with you and the incoming secretary, o...

...to ask if you remember that visit to HUD . Did you learn anything abou...

...before in watching him interact with HUD employees? I do remember that visi...

...well. I also remember Michelle visiting HUD just a few weeks after I'd started...

...I wanted to ask how your time leading HUD changed how you thought about th...

...clear rules of the road, etc. And HUD made me believe that strongly, t...

...for me. It was a moral issue for me at HUD . I worked extensively on gettin...

...tens of billions of dollars a year as HUD secretary to clean up damage fro...

...it's something I saw very directly at HUD . There was enormous excitement abou...

...government—something like two-thirds of HUD employees were eligible fo...

...standing at the elevators in the HUD building on the last day before th...

...was influenced—we did a lot of work at HUD on this kind of place-base...

...of others. We had an initiative at HUD called Strong Cities, Stron...

...in our earlier sessions, but I was at HUD during the Clinton administration an...

...experience. Then, I was nominated to be HUD secretary before the transition to th...

...a stack of letters—and I'm working at HUD —saying, “If you don't help us, Shaun...

...that I was going to be announced as HUD secretary. We were living in Brooklyn...

...say mostly still, honestly, within HUD and VA about what could happen rapidly...

...where for veterans it really was USICH, HUD , VA primarily driving the workin...

...relationship at that time were with HUD , and especially the secretary's tea...

...for homelessness programming out of HUD . I knew all of those folks prett...