Oops, I neglected to publish this a couple of weeks ago. Sorry! I'll follow up on this soon.
weird. Obama has dedicated this whole broadcast to building up HUD in the public mind. He even acknowledges -- vaguely -- HUD's bullshit "urban renewal" policies.
But then, right before he announces his selection of Sean Donovan as his new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he says this, which I can't help taking as a blueprint for not just his HUD policy, but his financial development policy: "promoting cities as the backbone of regional growth, by not only solving the problems in our cities, but seizing the opportunities in our growing suburbs, exurbs, and metropolitan areas."
Of course, I think the blueprint is just this part: "promoting cities as the backbone of regional growth," while the rest is a his sop to diversity.
Fascinating that Obama has taken a crisis that's understood as a financial crisis -- the mortgage crisis -- and started pushing instead an agenda that makes it an affordable housing crisis. I'll lay 50 to 1 this was on his agenda four years ago and he would have found a way to make it stick no matter what happened. Smart.
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