United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was born on September 9th, 1965, catapulted into being by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Since its inception, HUD has had an unparalleled impact in the United States on housing generally and affordable, fair housing specifically, community development, and homelessness.

Johnson’s creation of HUD was part of his reaction to an increased focus in the country on civil rights, urban renewal, and poverty. He framed the creation of the federal Executive branch (cabinet-level) agency as a continuation of the push begun in the 1930s and 1940s under the New Deal around public housing, addressing sub-standard housing and implementing large-scale urban renewal.

HUD was preceded by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) signed into being by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, as part of his “New Deal”, as well as the Truman Administration’s Housing and Home Financing Agency.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the United States government, for better and largely worse in terms of its treatment of racialized and people in the lower socio-economic classes, had taken a direct role in creating and managing affordable housing. In conjunction with HUD and Congressional legislators, in 1968, Johnson set HUD on a path of overseeing and regulating affordable housing largely created by and managed by the private sector - a shift that has greatly influenced housing development in the United States.

HUD's activities through the Federal Housing Association and other sub-agencies, promoted single-family home ownership and created and reinforced racial segregation and encouraged racial discrimination in housing in the United States in the 20th century.

Core Mandates

The agency’s stated central, long-standing mandates, some of which were legislated before its inauguration are:

Increasing home ownership (1934)
Assisting Low-Income Renters (1937)
Ameliorating the Physical, Economic and Social Health of Cities (1949)
Fighting Discrimination in Housing Markets and “affirmatively" furthering the fair-housing goal of integration (1968)
Assisting Homeless Persons with Support and Housing Services (1987)

HUD is also tasked with administering federal disaster and recovery (1973). HUD is headed by a presidentially-appointed Secretary. Today the agency oversees a budget of over $30 billion.

HUD’s Major Program Offices

Housing: HUD’s Housing Office is responsible for oversight of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs, running the Federal Housing Administration, regulating manufactured housing, and administering multifamily housing programs, including Supportive Housing for the Elderly (Section 202) and Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities (Section 811)
Community Planning and Development: This Office administers many of HUD’s major affordable housing and homelessness programs including the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), the HOME program, Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy program (Mod Rehab SRO), Shelter Plus Care, Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG), and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA).
Government National Mortgage Association (known as Ginnie Mae)
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity: Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity enforces Federal laws against race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability and familial status-based discrimination.
Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (developed in 1998)
Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control.
Policy Development and Research (PD&R): This HUD office is tasked with maintaining current information on market conditions, housing needs and existing programs, as well as with researching priority housing and community development issues via the HUD USER Clearinghouse.
Public and Indian Housing: This office administers the public housing program HOPE VI, the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly – yet more popularly – known as Section 8), Project-Based Vouchers,[21] and individual loan programs housing block grants[22] for Indian tribes, Native Hawaiians, and Alaskans.

Housing Highlights from HUD’s History (including preceding foundational legislation)

There are significant clusters of housing-related Federal legislation in the 1930s and 1940s, in the 1960s, and again in the 1990s and early 2000s.

1934 – The National Housing Act establishes the Federal Housing Administration, which facilitates mortgage insurance on FHA-approved lender loans made by FHA-approved lenders.This Act also formally established "redlining" neighborhoods (also termed "mortgage discrimination") a practice that would entrench racial and ethnic segregation across the country and that has had a lasting impact on the fortunes of minority communities and households as well as the shape of the nation's neighborhoods up until the present.

Presidential Administration: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D).

1937 – The Housing Act of 1937 inaugurates the United States Housing Authority, which oversees slum-clearance projects and the construction of low-rent housing. One critique of this act is that by sectioning off and isolating low income public housing projects that the Act further laid the foundations for racial and ethnic segregation, as much of the poor population it impacted were racial or ethnic minorities.

Presidential Administration: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D).

1938 – The National Housing Act Amendments of 1938 are enacted, creating the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), which created a secondary market to the Federal Housing Administration.

Presidential Administration: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D).

1942 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the National Housing Agency with Executive Order 9070, Establishing the National Housing Agency as well as a raft of other housing-related authorities and agencies as the US mobilized during World War II.

Presidential Administration: Franklin D. Roosevelt (D).

1949 – The Housing Act of 1949 is put in place a policy of "urban redevelopment" to promote the eradication of housing in communities classed as slums and promote community development and redevelopment programs.

Presidential Administration: Harry S. Truman (D).

1954- The Housing Act of 1954 introduced the now-fraught term "urban renewal." It is this policy a continuation of the previous "urban development", that involved the razing of housing in largely minority communities and other issues around housing that would result in the displacement of hundreds by eminent domain from their neighborhoods and help fan frustrations in minority communities that would culminate in the 1960s in mass protests and rioting in cities across the country. The era of "urban renewal" would run through to the early 1970s and left behind it a fear of displacement and suspicion of development in lower-income minority communities.

Presidential Administration: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R).

1959 – The Housing Act of 1959 sets in place funding for elderly housing.

Presidential Administration: Dwight D. Eisenhower (R).

1964 – Under Lyndon B. Johnson, the Housing Act of 1964 provides access to rehabilitation loans for homeowners.