INTRO: The Obama Administration’s top housing official came to Michigan yesterday. He’s trying to shift money away from sparsely populated suburbs and townships and into old downtowns. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports from Lansing.
In past years, the state affordable housing conference featured people close to real rock stars.
(Nat sound of singing and guitar)
That was Michigan native Jeff Daniels. He’s mastered the stage and the silver screen.
The star this year was Shaun Donovan. He’s the Secretary of HUD. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Donovan’s message at the Lansing Center didn’t get people high. It got them sober.
“Think about the fact that the average family in this country today spends 52% of their income on housing and transportation combined. That imbalance was a significant contributing cause to our foreclosure crisis.”
In January, HUD, The EPA and the Department of Transportation started working together. For the first time ever, they’re trying to fund projects to promote trains and buses instead of cars, apartments instead of single family homes, and abandoned land downtown instead of farmland on the fringe. Donovan said this will create jobs.
“I’ve spoken at length with the Governor, with Mayor Walling and Dan Kildee from Flint, with Mayor Bing in Detroit and so many other mayors and local officials. And I’ve heard over and over again how HUD’s economic development programs lack a targeted place based tool for creating jobs. With our catalytic investment fund, communities will finally have that tool.”
HUD is giving out grants totaling $150 million dollars. Dan Kildee spoke in East Lansing last Friday about the same idea. Kildee was going to run for governor and Donovan offered him a senior position with HUD. But he decided on starting a new national non-profit called the Center for Community Progress. He now splits his time between Flint and Washington.
“I get frustrated even hearing some of my friends in HUD when dealing with communities they continue to circle back to deadlines and compliance and not outcomes.”
Dan Kildee said he’s not holding Secretary Donovan responsible for failing to change the culture at HUD. The 250 people at MSU Friday and the 1,500 at the Lansing Center Wednesday support Donovan too. He came to Detroit in January with $224 million. This money is being used in Detroit, Highland Park, Hamtramck, Wyandotte, Flint, Saginaw, Pontiac, Lansing, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, and Benton Harbor. Officials will demolish when necessary and rehab when possible. Says Kildee:
“Create opportunities for more public investment and significant private investment, to use NSP, $224 million here in Michigan should equal $1-2 billion of investment rather than taking the approach of how do you turn $224 million into $100 of value.”
Kildee pioneered the land bank idea in Genesee County. It’s been copied in other Michigan counties and other states. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan spoke to reporters after his speech to the audience.
“We’re gonna leverage what is some innovate work of land banks in Flint and Detroit and other places and really be a model for other parts of the country. What’s great about it is this isn’t just a house at a time. The scale of the investment is gonna allow.”
Donovan is from New York. He said the South Bronx looked like a war zone 30 years ago. Now it’s booming. Some in the audience were waiting for him to compare it to Detroit. And say Motown will come roaring back too. For now……..
(Sound of Smokey and the Miracles “Just My Imagination.”)