[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 96 (Thursday, July 1, 1999)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E1463-E1464] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] DOING GOOD FOR HUD ______ HON. CHAKA FATTAH of pennsylvania in the house of representatives Wednesday, June 30, 1999 Mr. FATTAH. Mr. Speaker, I commend the following article to my colleagues from The Philadelphia Inquirer on the Department of Housing and Urban Development's activities in Philadelphia. [From the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 1999] Doing Good for Hud For a bureaucracy, it's a startling move: Sending skilled professionals out of their offices with sweeping orders to help people. They are ``community builders'' in what HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo calls ``an urban Peace Corps.'' (By Maida Odom) John Carpenter drives past rubbish-filled lots in Philadelphia, wondering if there's some way to get them into the hands of owners who would clean them up. Cynthia Jetter solves problems and investigates complaints from advocates for the disabled--the same people who last month protested outside her employer, the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. And Michael Levine, a career Washington bureaucrat now in Philadelphia, is getting to see some of the social programs he helped design. ``When you come in and meet people in a situation, you realize no program in itself is going to solve the problem,'' he says. They are executives who have left their offices-- ``outsiders'' with connections, insiders now on the street. They are HUD employees, members of a unique group of two- year ``fellows'' called community builders. Handpicked from inside and outside HUD, these special workers--about 900 at 81 offices nationwide, and 26 in Pennsylvania--have an extremely broad mandate: Do good. Jetter was a HUD employee who left to work at the Philadelphia Housing Authority and then returned. Carpenter formerly headed a Community Development Corp. Both are assigned to the Philadelphia office, as is Levine. HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who announced the program in March of 1998, dubbed these ``fellows'' an ``urban Peace Corps''--knowledgeable professionals from private industry, social services, other branches of government and elsewhere temporarily added to a HUD talent pool that has been winnowed through years of budget cuts. Karen Miller, who heads HUD's mid-Atlantic region, which is based here, helped write the ``community builders'' job description. ``What has been expected of HUD's staff was schizophrenic,'' she said. HUD bureaucrats were the ``cops'' who guarded public dollars, she said, while at the same time they were expected to offer technical assistance to the people being monitored. ``The Secretary [Cuomo] separated the two roles,'' she said. ``The great majority [of HUD employees] are still defenders of public dollars,'' involved in awarding grants, moving applications through the system and monitoring spending. ``Community builders are the ones who go out and work with the community and help them do what they want and need to do.'' In almost two decades as a Washington-based bureaucrat, Levine saw himself getting further away from his personal career goal ``to go out and help communities develop.'' As a HUD executive he was writing programs and evaluating projects. Eventually, there were few fact-finding trips into the field to see firsthand what he was planning and administering. About half the community builders are like Levine, people who had worked inside HUD and are now getting a chance to see their work in action. Being in the area of welfare-to-work for about a year has been eye-opening, he said. Over that period, Levine has arranged for more than 700 people--public-housing managers and tenant leaders--to get special briefings explaining the new welfare-reform laws. In Washington, he had administered and written a program offering public-housing tenant councils $100,000 grants to develop job opportunities. ``They didn't want to spend the money for fear of getting into trouble,'' Levine said. Now, as a community builder, he's helping bring together public and private sources to create computer centers at public housing developments. ``A computer center is a place where children can go after school, where adults can get the literacy they need,'' he said. ``When I ran that program in Washington I didn't see the money being used that way. You get a different perspective. You don't realize the nuances. ``It's not like I learned any big new things to shock me. But things are much clearer now.'' Before she met Jetter, Nancy Salandra, project coordinator for the Pennsylvania Action Coalition for Disability Rights in Housing, generally found herself fighting to get HUD to listen. Jetter has been ``a terrific person to work with,'' Salandra said. ``What she says she's going to do, she does. ``She has the knowledge; she has the understanding of housing; she has the understanding about HUD; and she understands how the system overwhelms people.'' In addition to meeting with groups that usually come to HUD with complaints. Jetter is bringing together people who work on housing for veterans and disabled and homeless people. She also is trying to organize a tracking method to keep up with who needs services and who's receiving them. ``We need to track the impact of programs [and] track housing, and we can better address the needs of the population.'' Jetter worked for HUD for 14 years before taking over as head of resident services at the Philadelphia Housing Authority. She left there for a research project at the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. in New York. Last fall, she rejoined HUD as a community builder. When Jetter left HUD, she thought she'd never go back. For most of her years with the agency, she felt it was growing farther away from the people it served. People ``were numbers,'' she said. ``This is a big step for HUD to take people in from the outside. And the response has been overwhelming. P.R. for HUD is a big part of it. We go to every meeting we can, try to be a visible as possible. After a meeting, people are almost knocking you down to get your card. ``We used to be the ones who said `Gotcha!' Now people can talk to us before they get into trouble.'' Carpenter, who formerly headed the New Kensington Community Development Corp., where he won praise for clearing and reusing vacant lots, joined HUD last summer. In this job he's been able to pull together people he could not have assembled in his old job. For example, a group of American Street area residents and representatives of a community development corporation there were [[Page E1464]] working together earlier this year, hoping to obtain funding to design projects for property acquisition and housing preservation. Carpenter, according to Santiago Burgos, director of the American Street Empowerment Zone in North Philadelphia, was able to help people working in the area ``think through to design a project to consolidate those goals.'' Carpenter helped them see that they needed money for pre-development and environmental testing. Their improving planning made it easier to identify and get funding, Burgos said. In addition, Carpenter brought in the right people as advisers and consultants, Burgos said, and ``shortened the learning curve'' for the community people, moving things forward faster. Such projects are close to Carpenter's heart. ``Frankly, it's one of Philadelphia's biggest disgraces-- what happens to vacant land once the building is torn down. The city essentially abdicates responsibility. They do not clean it, they do not maintain it, they do not cite the owners for not maintaining it. ``For a developer driving by here, the first gut-recoiling reaction is, `Why would I even build here if the people who live here tolerate this? What would they do to my store? What would they do to my business? ' '' Although the problem is vast, Carpenter said--in the city there are about 40,000 vacant buildings and 30,000 vacant lots, most privately owned--he thinks it can be tackled. ``Having the HUD seal of approval gets people to listen to me,'' he said. ____________________