HUD SECRETARY DONOVAN ANNOUNCES NEW DIRECTION FOR HUD THROUGH AGENCY'S STRATEGIC PLAN

WASHINGTON - U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan unveiled the agency's Strategic Plan, which will serve as the agency's roadmap toward accomplishing its mission to "create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and affordable homes for all."

"This Strategic Plan isn't just a paper exercise to produce a set of marching orders, but a real attempt to express what we want our agency, our homes and our neighborhoods to look like in the years to come," said Donovan during his address to all HUD staff nationwide. "The plan sets out clear goals and defines success as we take HUD to its fiftieth anniversary in 2015."

The Plan will guide the agency through fiscal years 2010-2015. Through the Strategic Plan's five specific goals, HUD will:

• Strengthen the Housing Market to Bolster the Economy and Protect Consumers: To restore stability to the market, HUD will reduce the foreclosure rate and in partnership with the Department of the Treasury, assist 3 million homeowners who are at risk of losing their homes due to foreclosure by the end of the fiscal year 2011. HUD will also increase FHA capital reserves to above 2 percent and stabilize neighborhoods by helping communities purchase abandoned and vacant properties.
  
  
• Meet the Need for Quality Affordable Rental Homes: HUD will balance the support for sustainable homeownership and rental housing by directly contributing to the production of millions of new rental homes while also preserving their affordability, quality, accessibility and energy efficiency.
  
  
• Utilize Housing as a Platform for Improving Quality of Life: Stable housing provides an ideal platform to deliver a wide variety of services to improve education, health, economic security, and safety of our residents. Building upon HUD's recent efforts to reduce chronic homelessness, HUD will use technology and improved accessibility to data to make federally subsidized housing a catalyst for investments in education, health and job training, and leverage private capital to expand housing for the growing number of seniors and homeless Americans - and end homelessness altogether.
  
  
• Build Inclusive and Sustainable Communities Free From Discrimination: Many of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the economic and housing crisis are among the least sustainable - with limited access to economic opportunity, the longest commuting times, the most unhealthy homes, and the poorest quality schools. To transform neighborhoods, we will link housing to schools, jobs, and better transportation through our Choice Neighborhoods Initiative and Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, and provide gap financing through a Catalytic Investment Fund for innovative, high-impact development projects that will create jobs in communities with longstanding development challenges.
  
  
• Transform the Way HUD Does Business: HUD recognizes that it cannot accomplish the goals in the Strategic Plan without changing the way the agency does business. HUD plans to work now to affect change by building capacity within the agency; improving performance management and accountability; decentralizing decision-making to empower staff; and simplifying programs, rules, and regulations.

Although details of the Plan were released today, HUD has already begun meeting President Obama's challenge for federal agencies to collaborate on all levels to deliver meaningful results to all Americans. In just sixteen months, HUD has demonstrated this commitment by, for example:

• Allocating all $13.6 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to all 50 states in just eight days. In only six months, all funds from the Recovery Act were available to be spent by communities across the country to create jobs and help families facing foreclosure.
  
  
• Working alongside nearly 350 public housing authorities nationwide to provide temporary housing to the more than 30,000 families that were displaced from their homes by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
  
  
• Collaborating with our partners in the Administration to stabilize our housing markets - stabilizing home prices, rebuilding homeowners' equity and revitalizing communities overrun with foreclosures.

"By engaging thousands of our employees, and partners this Strategic Plan reflects the spirit of President's Obama's community organizing work on Chicago's South Side - the importance of consensus-building, listening to people's needs and trying to find common ground," said Donovan. "This Plan isn't about my legacy or even President Obama's - but the legacy we all leave here at HUD at a time in which the agency has never been more important."

###

HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes: utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination; and transform the way HUD does business. More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.gov and espanol.hud.gov. You can also follow HUD on twitter @HUDnews, on facebook at www.facebook.com/HUD, or sign up for news alerts on HUD's News Listserv.