THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406160447
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Long
DATELINE: 940619 LENGTH:
\ Q. You said one of our best hopes in this country are the churches, the black churches. How will HUD work together with the churches?
{REST} A: I'm convinced that many major problems that confront our cities today are problems of economic decline and physical deterioration. But a lot of them are matters of the spirit - of failures of leadership, of failures of encouragement, and failures of encouraging young people to pursue certain disciplines and make the most of their lives.
Government can't deal with those issues of the spirit. We can set up support systems, but the leadership has to come from the community, and there's no greater institution or more resilience that has stood across the ages than the African-American church.
Q. A lot of your program also goes to anti-discrimination, opening up the suburbs, such as the Gatreaux program in Chicago. Are you looking for the churches to help you?
A. Yes. We have five areas that we have set as priorities at HUD: homelessness, turning around public housing, producing more affordable rental housing and home ownership, anti-discrimination measures to open up opportunity, and community strategy. Now let me focus on that fourth one to answer your question.
We believe that people ought to have maximum choice. That means if people choose to stay in a central city, it ought to be a real choice that people can live with - it's safe, it's not characterized by drugs and violence and so forth. If they choose, on the other hand, to live elsewhere, then that ought to be a choice also and not be impeded by discrimination (from) from the bank or insurance redlining or mortgage lending.
We have several strategies for mobility. One of them is the use of Section 8 (rent) vouchers which allow people to take that voucher and use it in the marketplace of the metropolitan area.
Another element of the strategy is to replace with hard units some of the public housing that today is concentrated and so problematic, and move to a place with new, smaller-scale, architecturally attractive, well-done, scattered, public housing.
The third is to provide counseling - mobility counseling. That means helping people who do have a Section 8 certificate to make moves and settle in another neighborhood so the children can settle into schools where they will perform better, where they can get a job and so forth.
That's why I mentioned the churches might have a special role. That if there's a church in a suburban area, they would welcome people who are arriving into that community and help them get settled so that they're not completely on their own.
Q. How do you expect to overcome some of the resistance in suburban areas of accepting not only Section 8 people but also of scattered-site public housing?
A. I can't speak to the circumstances of this area, but the resistance to accepting people on Section 8 is not great. There are almost no cases in America where people resist Section 8. The reason is the very discreet movement. In other words, there's an apartment building, that apartment building accepts a Section 8 voucher, they go there and who's to complain.
There is occasionally in communities a rebellion against the fact that the public housing authority is going to buy a duplex, an apartment building, build a small apartment building. We know we have a problem when we set out to do that. But what many housing authorities are doing is buying a single-family house and placing a single family in such a setting.
Q. Across city lines?
A. In this case, in the city of Omaha but not necessarily in the suburbs. But it can be done across city lines. It requires a kind of metropolitan agreement to share some responsibility for public housing. One of our efforts this year is what we're calling our ``metropolitan-wide strategy'' of creating incentives for metropolitan areas that are willing to put in place some kind of movement toward sharing responsibility.
Q. What were some of those incentives?
A. Funding. Additional funding for the metropolitan area as a whole. It's primarily HUD at this point. We are starting a discussion with the Office of Management and Budget about what incentives we could assemble that would really have some power. But for now we are trying to put together funds that would fund the planning of such efforts, and that would be an incentive in and of itself.
Q. Can you elaborate on the idea of using the churches as conduits to promote home ownership?
A. We're about a month away from unveiling a major home ownership study that we hope will involve the president in the actual announcement because he does definitely believe in that strategy of home ownership for Americans, middle-class Americans, people who have not been able recently to buy their starter homes, young couples, and lower-income persons who aspire to home ownership.
I don't envision that it will be the churches that would be the conduit for loans for home ownership, but I do envision the churches helping us select people who they know are responsible and have jobs and are real potential to move up in the world. I do envision the churches helping us in counseling.
The first time since the end of World War II the rate of home ownership in America has declined the last several years. We were being less attentive to strategies for home ownership and the result was a decline in the home ownership rate. It went from like 68 percent to about 64 percent.
Q. What are some of the home ownership strategies?
A. Create a trust fund, a national trust fund, to make it possible to do low downpayment programs. Some programs for lowering mortgage rates by using new mortgage instruments. New commitments of the mortgage systems, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as secondary mortgage instruments to buy more mortgages. And change what they demand at the banks so the banks have more comfort in loaning to families because they know that the mortgages are going to be bought by the secondary market, and therefore they're more enthusiastic about making some of these loans.
Q. One of your components of public housing reforms is rent caps for working families. Norfolk applied for that, but HUD didn't come through.
A. Right now we have no statutory authority to do it. We have our 1994 legislation before Congress. In public housing we're asking for ability to separate income and rent so that when people go to work and their income goes up, there isn't an automatic mandatory increase in their rent serving as a tremendous disincentive to work.
We're also asking for rent caps so that when people's rent does reach a point it can be frozen. Therefore, families who are working can be encouraged to stay in public housing. We want a mix of people of different incomes in public housing so they can serve as examples.
{KEYWORDS} U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT INTERVIEW
by CNB