Column by Neal R. Peirce.
The Cincinnati Post. February 2, 2001.
As if it were a generation and not just a few short years since Republican
conservatives were out to annihilate it, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development appears to be sailing into the George W. Bush era with scarcely a
ripple of controversy.
Melquiades Martinez, Bush's choice for secretary, won enthusiastic
bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Scandal-plagued during the Reagan
administration, the department was revived by Secretaries Jack Kemp and Henry
Cisneros and won widespread praise for radical management reforms effected under
Andrew Cuomo, secretary in Clinton's second term.
Now Martinez, most recently the elected executive of Florida's Orange County
(Orlando), is promising to be a ''frequent and forceful'' spokesman for housing
priorities incorporated in the HUD budget (now over $32 billion a year).
For housing advocates, this selection seems a rare stroke of luck. Here's a
man who fled Cuba as a teen-ager, speaking no English, worked his way through
law school at Florida State University, and, as a member of the Orlando Housing
Authority in the 1980s, fought for affordable housing for the elderly and single
mother low-income households.
Martinez became a spokesman for the Cuban-American position in the Elian
Gonzalez incident - he even took Elian for a tour of Disney World. He became
co-chair of the Bush presidential campaign in Florida. He's a close ally of Gov.
Jeb Bush, who appointed him chair of a critical growth management study
commission for the state.
One couldn't imagine better political cover as one arrives to enter
Washington's political wars in the GWB era.
In his HUD confirmation hearings, Martinez promised: ''Far from being a
caretaker, I intend to be a very active secretary.'' He even suggested his
department's mandate should be expanded to taking an active role in helping
states and localities curb the rapid-fire suburban growth triggered by the fast
U.S. economic expansion of the 1990s.
The draft report from his Florida growth study commission can be faulted for
lack of specificity on how to stop very bad projects. But it endorses ''compact
urban centers'' and plows new ground with an analysis system focused on the full
and indirect costs of development projects-described by Martinez as the
''centerpiece'' of the commission's work.
The explicit goal: to level the playing field between center city projects
and those on the suburban periphery. In most cases, town center projects, where
infrastructure is already in place, can be counted to ''cost out'' more
effectively.
Significance: We have a new HUD secretary attuned to ''smart growth''
principles-a major breakthrough, and one especially unexpected under a
Republican president from smart-growth-blind Texas. No one expects HUD to
dictate conserving land-use policies. But a department attuned to the issue, and
headed by a former local official, might have significant influence.
Even more critical: Martinez isn't ducking the national affordable housing
crisis exacerbated by the burgeoning boom-and growing housing costs-of the last
years.
Though homeownership has risen to an all-time high of 67.7 percent, some 14
million American households are reported to have critical housing needs - either
paying more than 50 percent of their income in rent, or living in severely
substandard units. There's not a single U.S. region where a full-time minimum
wage worker can afford to pay fair market rent for modest rental housing. HUD
last year reported 1 million families on waiting lists for public housing or
so-called ''Section 8'' rental subsidies.
Now, in hot growth areas, increasing numbers of solidly middle class
families can't afford rentals or home down payments.
So it's significant that Martinez said at his confirmation hearings he'd
encourage affordable housing through tax credits, maintaining all of today's
Section 8 contracts, and push to increase homeownership-especially among
African- and Hispanic-Americans.
Neal R. Peirce is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post who
specializes in urban affairs. E-mail: npeirce@citistates.com.
Copyright 2000 The Cincinnati Post, an E.W. Scripps newspaper. | 