Housing policy will be CNU’s focus, Norquist says

New president/CEO will try to heighten federal encouragement for mixed-use development. Influencing federal housing policy is going to be a top goal of the Congress for the New Urbanism under its new president and CEO, former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist. At least three housing issues will get Norquist’s attention this year: • How to carry out the lessons of HOPE VI now that the federal program is near death. • How to reverse the mortgage-lending industry’s preference for housing that stands apart from retail and other activities. • How to address dissatisfaction with the federal Section 8 rent subsidy program. In a phone interview with New Urban News in late January, soon after starting work at CNU’s new Chicago office, Norquist said he intends to focus on ways the federal government can encourage better patterns of housing and transportation. During his 15 years as mayor and his earlier years as a Democratic state legislator, Norquist often rose above the knee-jerk, partisan rhetoric that’s common in political life. Consistent with his more reflective approach, he indicated he is eager to bridge some of the sharp divisions that have dogged national politics and inflicted harm on cities. “I think we’re going to get involved in a cross-ideological-lines discussion of the federal role in housing,” he said. HOPE VI, which took shape under President Clinton’s first secretary of Housing & Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, is one of the chief federal housing programs that the Bush administration proposed phasing out, to the consternation of many new urbanists. “A lot of people were shocked when [Bush campaign manager] Karl Rove persuaded President Bush to eliminate HOPE VI,” Norquist said. That program, he noted, “was a really important advance for CNU.” As of January, 193 HOPE VI grants had been issued in 114 cities, intended to produce mixed-income developments with human scale, well-defined streets, and defensible public and private spaces. Of those, only 26 had been completed. About $2.5 billion of the approximately $5 billion appropriated in the past decade has been spent. Norquist acknowledges that implementation has lagged — public housing bureaucracies were slow-moving long before the inception of HOPE VI. But he emphasized that “from a design standpoint, it’s been very successful. It’s reached a point where public housing adds value to communities around it.” In January, Congress appropriated $149 million for the current fiscal year. Though it staved off the Bush administration’s call for no appropriation at all, it is far less than the $447 million the program had received the previous year. CNU board member Ray Gindroz, whose Pittsburgh-based Urban Design Associates has planned many HOPE VI developments, says that in addition to a reduction in funds, HUD has imposed tighter rules, which make it difficult for HOPE VI to achieve the broader goal of revitalizing the neighborhoods in which the projects stand. The Bush administration’s move to end the program “happened in part because there hasn’t been enough dialogue between conservatives or neoconservatives like Howard Husock [a Harvard professor critical of HOPE VI] and liberals, moderates, whatever,” Norquist said. “We need to talk about housing and federal policy. We need to look at the big picture. I think the conservatives have some legitimate concerns.” A review of a book by Husock appears on page 15. “We’re trying to figure out what will be the most productive course of action,” Gindroz added. “It’s not clear that the most productive course is to fight for Hope VI.” An alternative, he said, would be to urge the government to make funds available for “building and rehabilitating neighborhoods.” (See sidebar.) Another issue is the Section 8 program, which subsidizes the rent of low-income people. “It’s become very unpopular,” Norquist observed. “Middle-class and upper-middle-class people tend to fight it.” The opposition cuts across race. He noted that in some communities, economically successful African-Americans have been dismayed when the Section 8 program introduced lower-income tenants into their neighborhoods. Critics have argued that Section 8 rentals tend to concentrate in certain neighborhoods, sometimes causing those neighborhoods to deteriorate. “Getting together people from a broad ideological base” can help to examine the concerns and devise remedies, Norquist said. “We can play a role in that.” The federal government also influences housing — not always in a positive way — through its backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-chartered firms that lead the secondary mortgage market. Norquist said the Fannie Mae Foundation is beneficial, but Fannie Mae itself and Freddie Mac “have a bias against mixed-use developments.” The secondary mortgage market, which buys residential mortgages issued by lenders, “is in favor of separated uses,” he said. Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big, other companies in the secondary mortgage market mimic the two leaders’ standards, Norquist said, adding, “That works against urbanism. It requires a lot more red tape and procedure to do anything other than separate use.” He pointed out that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “say it’s federal rules that restrict” their operations. If federal rules are the source of the problem, “maybe conservatives would like to see those changed,” he speculated. “We want to get at the fundamental DNA that makes stuff happen.” On another front in the ideology wars, Norquist noted that Andres Duany has volunteered to organize a session bringing together new urbanists and libertarians at CNU XII in Chicago. Some libertarians have attacked smart growth and, to a lesser extent, New Urbanism. Overall, the June 24-27 CNU conference “will focus on quality” and on “streets, blocks, buildings” rather than on regions, Norquist said. The reason for concentrating on smaller-scale matters is that “there’s been a widespread dissatisfaction with some of the quality of new urbanist communities that have been built,” he explained. CNU’s other priority for the year involves changing the rules under which streets and roads are laid out. “Our most immediate contribution in 2004 will be our transportation initiative,” Norquist said. “We’re working with the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Federal Highway Administration. I hope we’ll come up with a product that will be useful for developers and designers.” (See Jan.-Feb. 2004 New Urban News.)