Washington
13 December 2008
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has chosen New York City's housing
commissioner as his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Shaun Donovan has a national
reputation for developing affordable housing.
Mr. Obama praised
his nominee as housing secretary for his record in New York, where he
managed a $7.5 billion plan that put 500,000 people in affordable
housing.
"As Commissioner of Housing Preservation and
Development in New York City, Shaun has led the effort to create the
largest housing plan in the nation, helping hundreds of thousands of
our citizens buy or rent their homes," he said.
Donovan is
credited with helping people who participated in the program avoid
foreclosure. Of the 17,000 participating homes, only five were
foreclosed.
The president-elect says the federal Department of
Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, is especially important when so
many families' homes have been jeopardized in the subprime mortgage
crisis.
"From providing shelter to those displaced by Katrina to
giving help to those facing the loss of a home to revitalizing our
cities and communities, HUD's role has never been more important," he
said.
In his Saturday radio address, Mr. Obama said the mortgage
crisis has threatened cities, but it provides an opportunity for new
thinking about ways to help urban residents.
"We cannot keep
throwing money at the problem, hoping for a different result," said the
president-elect. "We need to approach the old challenge of affordable
housing with new energy, new ideas and a new, efficient style of
leadership. We need to understand that the old ways of looking at our
cities just will not do."
Donovan is Mr. Obama's twelfth
cabinet nomination. The president-elect has yet to announce his
choices for the Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence
Director, U.S. Trade Representative, the Environmental Protection
Agency and the departments of Energy, Education, Interior, Labor,
Transportation and Agriculture.
Like several other Obama cabinet
nominees, Donovan served in the Clinton administration, where he was
deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing in the department he
has been chosen to lead.