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New York City Official Chosen As HUD Secretary

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The Associated Press

Published: December 14, 2008

CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named New York City housing commissioner Shaun Donovan to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, turning to a former Clinton administration aide known for developing affordable housing.

Obama praised Donovan's record at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where he managed a $7.5 billion plan with a goal of putting a half-million New Yorkers in affordable housing.

The Harvard-educated architect also kept foreclosures to a minimum in the city's low- and moderate-income home ownership plan, with just five out of 17,000 participating homes.

"We can't keep throwing money at the problem, hoping for a different result," Obama said during his radio address released early Saturday. "We need to approach the old challenge of affordable housing with new energy, new ideas, and a new, efficient style of leadership."
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg named Donovan, a New York native, to head the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 2004. He has been the point person for implementing Bloomberg's plan to build and preserve 165,000 affordable housing units for 500,000 people by 2013.

Donovan, 42, took a leave of absence as New York's housing commissioner to campaign for Obama.

Before working for Bloomberg, he worked at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., and before that, he was deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing at HUD during the Clinton administration. In that role he was the government's chief administrator for managing privately owned, government-subsidized housing. The housing subsidy programs provided more than $9 billion annually to 1.7 million families.

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