BLOG VIEW: I was always under the impression that the departmental acronym ‘HUD’ stood for ‘Housing and Urban Development.’ But no one at HUD seems to remember that, if this past weekend's silliness was any indication.
Last month, HUD requested that the nation's 3,200 public housing authorities set aside June 18 for ‘Father's Day 2011.’ According to HUD, this event – which, of course, is a day before the actual Father's Day – would be used to ‘celebrate fatherhood, family and to support fathers in staying connected with their children.’ HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave a vigorous tug at the heartstrings when he announced the initiative.
‘Children with involved fathers grow up happier, healthier and better prepared to succeed in life,’ Donovan said. ‘Yet every night, one out of three American children goes to bed in a home without a father present. These events will bring fathers and their children together and connect the dads to the social and economic resources they need to be the best parents they can be.’
Funny, but Donovan never bothered to talk about issues that are somewhat more relevant to the HUD mission, such as how many American children go to bed each night in a home that is under the threat of foreclosure, or how today's parents are struggling to come up with money that covers the cost of their residence. According to ‘The State of the Nation's Housing’ report issued on June 6 by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, 19.4 million households – 9.3 million homeowners and 10.1 million renters – spent more than half of their incomes on housing.
One could easily imagine that access to affordable housing would connect the beleaguered fathers of this country to the ‘social and economic resources they need to be the best parents they can be,’ but HUD, under Donovan's leadership, has yet to offer any coherent policy relating to affordable housing.
When HUD announced Father's Day 2011, it stated that the participating public housing agencies would provide ‘fun activities to support the bonding of fathers and their children while connecting fathers to economic development resources.’ I'm sorry, but is this the job of a public housing agency? I cannot imagine what ‘economic development resources’ were being offered to the dads who showed up – remember, we're in a country where unemployment is 9.1% and the threat of a double-dip recession is too close for comfort. And if the public housing agencies have access to ‘economic development resources,’ I wish they would share it with the rest of us.Â
And as for ‘bonding’ activities, this is the ultimate stupidity – any adult male who is too dim or too callous to provide for his family is not going to recognize his responsibilities following an afternoon's visit to a public housing agency's one-shot carnival/job fair. But really, when was the Obama administration genuinely concerned about preserving families within today's fraying economy?
If the administration was serious about fighting for families, it would aggressively push to expand one of the relatively few successful programs that encourage job and affordable-housing creation in at-risk areas: The Treasury Department's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which received a relatively measly $227 million for fiscal year 2012. Now compare that sum to the cost of the U.S. government's efforts to maintain a no-fly zone over Libya: The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense industry think tank, estimates the sum of that effort to be $300 million per week. Obviously, the Obama administration believes that money should be spent in bombing Libyan cities instead of strengthening U.S. cities.
Mercifully, the vast majority of public housing agencies chose not to participate in HUD's dimwitted Father's Day 2011. And can you blame them? These agencies have enough problems due to severe cutbacks in state and municipal budgets and the increasingly dismal situation that is putting the U.S. economy into reverse, so the last thing they need is to waste their energy and resources on an event that has nothing to do with their operating mission.
As for HUD's Donovan, he needs to remember that the HUD acronym that does not stand for social engineering or family-building events. His job is to present serious housing and urban development strategies, and his failure to his job correctly is hurting fathers, mothers and children across the country.
– Phil Hall, editor, Secondary Marketing Executive
(Please address all comments regarding this opinion column to hallp@sme-online.com.)
(Photo courtesy Ties-Necktie)
