Oh, the HORROR! (Updated)
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Trump should raze HUD headquarters to drain DC swamp
Gross negligence has always been HUD’s standard operating procedure
Jim Bovard, Fox News
The Trump administration just announced plans to sell the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a brutalist architectural monstrosity. Secretary Scott Turner admits that HUD headquarters is "known as the ugliest building in D.C."
The Trump administration is also seeking to terminate half of HUD’s staff and defund programs that have vexed America since the launch of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Andrew Cuomo, former New York governor and Bill Clinton’s last HUD secretary, admitted in 1998 that HUD had been "the poster child for failed government." In 1976, Detroit City Council president (and future U.S. senator) Carl Levin denounced the agency as "Hurricane HUD" for ravaging the Motor City with reckless subsidized mortgages with stratospheric default rates.
Vice President Al Gore denounced HUD-financed public housing projects in 1996: "These crime-infested monuments to a failed policy are killing the neighborhoods around them." In 2006, the leftist Village Voice labeled HUD as America’s worst landlord.
Gross negligence has always been HUD’s standard operating procedure. In 2011, the Washington Post compiled hundreds of satellite images to prove that HUD’s largest homebuilding program was a "dysfunctional system that delivers billions of dollars to local housing agencies with few rules, safeguards or even a reliable way to track projects."
HUD claimed to have no idea that billions of dollars of its grants had been misused or plundered and ignored a barrage of complaints from individuals whose neighborhoods were ravaged. HUD left a "trail of failed developments in every corner of the country. Fields where apartment complexes were promised are empty and neglected," the Post noted.
Andrew Cuomo, Bill Clinton’s last HUD secretary, admitted in 1998 that HUD had been "the poster child for failed government."
During the 1990s, I spent many days at HUD headquarters investigating boondoggles. HUD was overstocked with the most depressed employees you would ever meet outside of a group therapy session in a city jail. After I wrote a Wall Street Journal piece headlined "Clinton’s Wrecking Ball for Suburbs," HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros denounced me for "unfortunate stereotyping of assisted-housing residents."
But not nearly as unfortunate as subsequent HUD-financed violent crime waves across the nation. In the first half of 2016, at least 30 people were killed at Section 8 residences in Chicago - along with 7,000 other reported crimes.
In Houston, male Section 8 recipients are twice as likely to commit violent crimes as people with similar backgrounds and incomes who did not receive housing vouchers, according to a Texas A&M University study. A HUD-financed study found that Section 8 relocations "tripled the rate of arrests for property crimes" among boys who moved to new locales.
Vice President Al Gore denounced HUD-financed public housing projects in 1996: "These crime-infested monuments to a failed policy are killing the neighborhoods around them." (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
…. When Congress created HUD in 1965, it was supposed to bring social justice to American cities. But Sandra Thompson, Biden’s Federal Housing Finance Agency chief, testified to Congress in 2022 that the racial homeownership gap "is higher today than when the Fair Housing Act [of 1968] was passed."
The Biden administration sought to "fix" that problem with a new mandate to punish mortgage borrowers with good credit ratings by forcing them to subsidize borrowers with shaky records of paying their bills. But "No Deadbeats Left Behind" is a poor maxim for mortgage policies.
Secretary Turner is ready to abandon HUD headquarters, declaring that that agency’s focus is on "creating a workplace that reflects the values of efficiency, accountability and purpose." That 12-story building needs a half billion dollars in "deferred maintenance and modernization" expenses and costs more than $50 million a year to operate – despite being perennially half empty even before Trump’s mass firings. The maintenance and modernization costs far exceed the original cost of the building in inflation-adjusted dollars.
UP DATE
A reader supplies an insider’s perspective:
On HUD, when I was a Counsel to the Crime and Criminal Justice Subcommittee, Cisneros testified before us. I told my boss (Jim Sensenbrener) to ask Cisneros if families that included convicted drug dealers and other felons were being evicted from HUD housing. Cisneros twice evaded the question, and then admitted that, no, they weren't being evicted bcs it would be unfair to the drug dealer's, murderer's, whatever's, other family members.
Also, NYCHA was actually quite good and also proud of how it maintained public housing, that is, until Federal regs forced them to allow unsavory elements to remain.
Finally, Fannie and Freddie weren't really responsible for the GFC. Much more responsible were the Basel III banking regs which allowed banks to determine -- on their own -- what counted as Tier 1 capital. They decided to count Fannie and Freddie debt as the equivalent of cash. My brother had been the Chief Compliance Officer at Bear Stearns. He told me that a five bps (0.05bps) decline in the value of Freddie and Fannie bonds would put every Wall St institution out of business.
He was right.
And I’ll add this: Back in the 80s and 90s, the Greenwich Housing Authority was incredible strict about drug dealers in our housing projects, and would evict entire families, including grandparents, if any member was dealing drugs. I was in Norwalk Housing Court on another matter one day, waiting for my own case to be called, and saw exactly such an eviction in process: a grandmother had let her grandson live with her in Armstrong Court, and he used her apartment to stash the drugs he was dealing. That bad move led to another move that was even worse: she was kicked out.
That was the, but the reader says that HUD regs put an end to such evictions in New York, and I assume that means Greenwich is also barred from carrying them out. Which, of course, harms the other, law-abiding tenants in these projects, who now have to live with criminals in their midst.