Marcia Fudge, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has announced that she will step down from her post later this month to retire.
Fudge is the 18th secretary of HUD. Throughout her career, she has worked to help low-income families, seniors, and communities across the country.
Fudge served as U.S. Representative for the 11th Congressional District of Ohio from 2008 to 2021. She was a member of several Congressional Caucuses and past Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
As a member of Congress, Fudge earned a reputation of tackling the unique challenges of her district by working with her Congressional delegation and across political ideologies, HUD says on its website.
In 1999, Fudge was elected the first female and first African American mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, a position she held for two terms. As mayor of Warrensville Heights, she adopted one of the first vacant and abandoned property ordinances in the state. She worked with local officials to develop a taskforce to protect against predatory lending and she secured the inclusion of property maintenance grants in the Warrensville Revitalization Action Plan.
Additionally, she brought new residential development to the city and addressed the city’s growing foreclosure crisis through the formation of a local partnership that helped residents maintain the financial security needed to buy or keep a home.
As a former mayor, Secretary Fudge has seen firsthand the need for economic development and affordable housing. She prioritized improving the city’s tax base and expanded opportunities for affordable housing.
Fudge, 71, has served as a Cabinet secretary for three years, steering the federal agency through housing crises in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement, Bob Broeksmit, CMB, president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association, thanked Fudge “for being a trusted industry partner and champion of improving affordable homeownership and rental housing opportunities for all Americans during her three-year tenure as HUD Secretary.”
“We commend Secretary Fudge and her staff for their contributions on numerous issues, including working with the industry to ensure struggling borrowers could remain in their homes through COVID-19 forbearance relief and other loss mitigation reforms, making homeownership more affordable by lowering mortgage insurance premiums, increasing multifamily large loan limits for the first time in nearly a decade, and implementing improvements to existing HUD programs to boost single-family and multifamily housing supply,” Broeksmit says. “[The] MBA will continue its work with HUD leadership and staff on policies and programs that solve for the supply and affordability challenges of today’s housing market.”