What's a federal agency to do? Especially one like the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), targeted by some members of Congress for swift demise. Too large, too bureaucratic, too unresponsive, said its critics.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the congressional graveyard. Former Secretary Henry Cisneros and then-Assistant Secretary Andrew Cuomo refused to let it die. Through a massive effort on the part of HUD supporters and a major restructuring of the department, HUD survives as an example of how a federal agency retooled in the face of a national movement many are calling "devolution." If HUD has not fully shifted its decision-making authority to its state-based field offices, it has made an good start.
One only has to look 40 miles north of the nation's capital, to the site of the next NACo Annual Conference, Baltimore, and the state of Maryland, to see the results of changes at HUD headquarters in Washington. The effort is only recent and not yet fully tested, but the HUD field office in Baltimore adopted a new "one-stop shopping" plan for all of its housing programs.
Under the old system, HUD personnel were assigned single programs at which they were expected to be experts. You went to the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) person or the Home Investment Partnership Act (HOME) person for information and assistance about subsidized housing or community development programs. And decisions about projects under each program stretched all the way back to HUD headquarters in Washington.
Now, under the most recent reorganization, HUD personnel are assigned jurisdictions, such as Howard County, Md., and they must now learn all the federal programs which can be used to put together affordable housing projects. Since most assisted housing projects use a variety of federal programs for funding, "HUD has effectively instituted a single point of contact policy," says Harold Young, acting state coordinator.
More importantly, says Young, HUD officials in Maryland can now make local decisions at the local level. They can, for instance, waive program requirements in the field, cutting out the time-consuming and agonizing wait for an official decision from Washington. Even the disposition of HUD properties has been contracted out to a local private company in an effort to streamline the process of turning over needed affordable housing to the public.
That the giant HUD recognizes the importance of allowing local decisions to be made locally is an encouraging sign in the ever-changing evolution of devolution.
(County Services News was written by Rick Keister, HOME project
director.)