Henry Cisneros has been an impassioned pioneer on America’s troubled urban frontier, the first housing secretary to avidly pursue the explosive goal of integrating the poor into mainstream society.
But when he steps down in January, Cisneros will leave an agency that remains in financial chaos, despised by Congress and ignored by the White House.
The future course of the Department of Housing and Urban Development–along with the fate of 4.8 million poor families who depend on its help–is very much in doubt.
“Whoever takes this job needs a mental examination. It would be like putting your head into the lion’s mouth,” said Anthony Downs, a housing expert at the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.
Though Republicans in Congress no longer are talking about eliminating the agency, they have slashed HUD’s budget by nearly a quarter over the past two years. And there will be more painful decisions when Congress addresses the skyrocketing costs of rent contracts with more than 20,000 privately owned housing projects.
President Clinton, meanwhile, continues to show little interest in housing and other urban issues. Advocates for the poor fear Clinton has become a “suburban president” who will choose a new HUD secretary to placate Congress rather than to fight for Cisneros’ agenda.
“It’s very clear that the Clinton administration is more conservative on urban issues than might have been believed in 1992,” said George Galster, professor of urban affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit. “In their view, it would be suicidal to articulate `old Democrat’ themes, or themes that appear to be primarily benefiting a minority racial audience.”
Among the names in circulation for Cisneros’ post: Seattle Mayor Norm Rice and Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell. Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, another likely candidate, has said he does not want the job.
Hours before he submitted his resignation to the White House in late November, Cisneros, 49, told reporters the decision hinged on money: His $148,000-a-year federal salary makes it tough, he said, to afford tuition for one daughter at New York University Law School and another at Stanford University.
But observers wonder whether Cisneros is also just tired.
“In my opinion, he’s the best secretary of HUD the nation’s ever had,” said Douglas Massey, sociology chairman at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on urban segregation. “But in the last two years, he’s been increasingly stymied.”
When he took office in 1993, Cisneros, the popular former mayor of San Antonio, laid out an ambitious plan to eliminate the scourge of homelessness, rebuild America’s decaying cities and transform public housing into a decent environment in which to live.
The underlying mission: To save the cities by breaking up the ghettos and integrating the suburbs. Even within the administration, some said it couldn’t be done.
But by 1994, while health care reform and the rest of Clinton’s agenda was mired in Washington politics, Cisneros was moving forward, demolishing the worst public housing, pursuing settlements of decades-old anti-discrimination lawsuits and urging HUD tenants to relocate to more affluent neighborhoods with better schools and more opportunity.
More Top Picks Can Adults Develop Irlen Syndrome Later In Life
“Henry Cisneros accomplished an historic achievement in bringing to the attention of the American people the problems with concentrations of poor people based on past and present policies of racial segregation. Nobody else has effectively brought up the issues and proposed solutions,” said Mike Daniel, a Dallas attorney who represents HUD tenants in three major lawsuits against HUD and Texas housing authorities.
But then came the Republican revolution, and, with the GOP in control of Congress, HUD was suddenly on the chopping block. Even the White House considered dismantling the long-troubled agency as a sacrifice to the new regime.
Adding to the misery: Cisneros was sued by his ex-mistress, for whom he nearly ended his marriage in 1988, prompting Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Cisneros lied to the FBI about the relationship when he was appointed to Clinton’s cabinet. The investigation is continuing.
Cisneros successfully maneuvered to save his agency, offering a “reinvention plan” to downsize staff and consolidate programs. And he did not abandon the goal of integration: At one point, he proposed replacing public housing with rent vouchers to give tenants maximum freedom to choose where to live.
In the end, Congress radically streamlined HUD, adopting many of Cisneros’ structural reforms. But Congress also cut $6 billion out of the agency’s $25 billion budget. Homeless funds were halved and money budgeted for new rent vouchers was eliminated.
Congress supported Cisneros’ plan to rid the nation of the most notorious public housing projects–Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green in Chicago and the West Dallas projects in Texas. In Detroit, the Jeffries and Parkside complexes are being demolished and rebuilt.
By the end of his time in office, HUD will have torn down 23,000 public housing units, Cisneros often boasts. But it’s an uncertain legacy: Conservative critics say HUD shouldn’t bother to replace the units, but should instead hand out rent vouchers to those left without homes.
Meanwhile, some HUD tenants, frightened by the mood in Washington, have halted wrecking balls in some cities, including Memphis, Tenn., and St. Petersburg, Fla.
“Some housing developments should come down. But there is too much eagerness to blow up housing, and not enough care about the impact that would have when we’re trying to get homes for more and more people with less and less money,” said Lisa Donner, spokeswoman for the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN), a grass-roots coalition for low- and moderate-income people.
Navigating these turbulent waters will be one of the biggest challenges facing the next HUD secretary, observers said. Among others:
– Renewing rent contracts on 20,000 privately owned public housing projects, about half of which are insured or owned by HUD. In many cases, the contracts require HUD to pay rents that are far too high, but if Congress refuses to renew them, the owners could default on HUD-backed mortgages worth billions of dollars.
“This is a financial time bomb,” said Ron Utt, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
– Preventing homelessness in the wake of welfare revision. Some observers believe the changes in welfare will radically increase homelessness as welfare payments are cut off and people are thrown into the streets. Others ask what will happen when people who had been on welfare start working and are forced, because of the extra income, to pay more in rent.
“People living in public housing are the poorest of the poor,” said Eugene Lowe, assistant executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “People will be coming off welfare and going to work and having to pay for housing. Will we be able to put them into affordable housing?”
– Keeping HUD alive and effective as both political parties search for new ways to cut federal spending.
Cisneros pursued policies that “illuminated the reality” that concentrating poor people in decaying inner-cities hurts entire regions, including wealthy suburbs, said Helen Dunlap, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, in Washington, D.C.
“The challenge now,” Dunlap said, “is for someone to carry out these programs at the same time Congress,” as well as the White House, “is committed to balancing the budget.”