GRAPEVINE
Rooting Out Jackson's Legacy
BY ANDRE F. SHASHATY
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE • May 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. —I did not celebrate when Alphonso
Jackson resigned as secretary of the
Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) on March 31. But
I was very happy for the honest and
motivated employees of HUD. They must feel
like they have been liberated and that maybe,
just maybe, the agency has a future as a place
to work and a legitimate player in solving the
nation's housing problems.
I have talked to dozens of hardworking
HUD staffers in the last two years, and I can
assure you Jackson will not be missed. From
the very start, they tell me, he ran the place like
his own private kingdom. He created a culture
where compliant staffers who
put aside their ethics as public
servants to do as Jackson
pleased got promoted and
those who questioned corrupt
practices were punished.
And as much as we have
written about his problems,
including our series on contracting
that won the Jesse H.
Neal Award from American
Business Media, not one person
who ever worked with
Jackson has said one word in
his defense.
But we must remember, Jackson's departure
is not enough, on its own, to bring HUD
back from the brink of irrelevance. HUD has a
long way to go before it can once again serve as
an effective partner with state and local government
and private developers to preserve
and create affordable housing.
As our reporting has revealed, the corruption
at HUD reached far down the ladder into
the heart of the bureaucracy. The first step is
for federal investigators to reveal the full depth
of the self-dealing and favoritism and punish
its architects. Then, new leadership at HUD
must make sure the agency is following proper
contracting processes and terminate contracts
that were made to incompetent firms.
I applaud Sens. Christopher Dodd and
Patty Murray for publicly seeking Jackson's
resignation. Now Congress needs to keep the
pressure on to make sure the Justice
Department and the HUD inspector general
continue digging into the full range of problems
with HUD contracting.
Most important, those of you who hope to
work with HUD in the future must look
toward this fall and lobby aggressively for the
newly elected president to appoint a very
strong and experienced manager to run HUD
with a direct mandate for reform.
...
On a completely different topic, I want to
announce that after 15 years as editor-in-chief
of AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE, I am giving
up day-to-day editorial management. I will
write one more editorial for our June issue,
and that will be my last as editor-in-chief.
I am not leaving the industry. I am still
fascinated by the social and political challenges
of building housing and revitalizing communities.
I plan to keep writing about the big-picture
issues of housing and urban policy. I
intend to keep fighting for a new commitment
to America's cities and to help position housing
as part of a sustainable model of community
development that addresses environmental,
educational, transit, and economic development
issues as a whole.
I am actively exploring starting a nonprofit
to continue to build public understanding
of and support for affordable housing.
I hope to stay involved with this magazine
and its conference, AHF Live, to some extent.
But the scope of my continued role remains to
be determined. As many of you know, I sold
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE, its sister publication,
APARTMENT FINANCE TODAY, and their
associated conferences to Hanley Wood, LLC,
in 2006.
The magazines and conferences will be in
the capable hands of Boyce Thompson, our
editorial director, and Christine Serlin, our
executive editor. You can find their contact
information in the masthead on page 4.
If you want to know more about my
future activities or just keep in touch, you can
reach me after April 25 at ashashaty@
earthlink.net or by mail at 20 Inverness Drive,
San Rafael, CA 94901.
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