In this episode hear an exclusive speech by Victoria Brown, at the time serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff at HUD, with a bonus Q&A on the relationship between local and federal housing innovation, creative applications of funding, and how city leaders can generate consensus on housing solutions.
At a recent event held at Harvard University Victoria Brown, at the time serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, spoke to chiefs of staff and deputy mayors of 30 large US cities, and we're releasing the audio of that speech with a bonus question and answer session. Listen to Brown discuss the critical role of city staff in addressing housing challenges in their communities and developing innovative solutions. She also provides insights on how cities can collaborate with the federal government to prioritize housing and offers examples of successful initiatives across the U.S.
Music credit: Summer-Man by Ketsa
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Betsy Gardner:
Hi, and welcome to the Data-Smart City Pod. This is Betsy Gardner, senior editor at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and producer of this podcast. We have a really special episode for you today. First, a recording of a keynote speech given by Victoria Brown who at the time of recording was serving as HUD's Deputy chief of staff. She spoke at a recent project on municipal Innovation convening, which brings together chiefs of staff and deputy mayors from 30 of the largest US cities. We're excited to be able to share her speech. Next, you'll hear the Q&A I conducted with Victoria. After her talk, you will hear some background noise, but we hope you enjoy this exclusive content. Thanks for listening.
Victoria Brown:
So I wanted to keep this somewhat informal. I know y'all are still finishing up breakfast, probably hopefully on your second cup of coffee after last night's great talk by Gregg. So to the staff and leadership of the Bloomberg Center for Cities here at Harvard, thanks for the invitation to speak to the staff of the city represented in the room. Thanks for your service. As a fellow chief of staff, I know these jobs are all consuming and our cities are better off for the sacrifices that you make to serve in these roles. Our Secretary often says that she believes those closest to the people are the best position to lead, and you all are representative of that. No one knows that ins and outs of your communities better than the city staff. Your constituents are your neighbors. Their problems are quite literally your own that makes your jobs as rewarding as they are challenging chiefs.
You're on the front lines of crisis in our nation every day when the going gets tough, your community relies on you to make things better for you. The stakes are high and the impact is personal. That's why HUD worked so hard on your behalf, especially because we all know there are a few things more personal than where you live, and that's why the president has prioritized strong investments in housing, including housing for the most vulnerable among us through his 2024 budget. As an administration, we value housing that is safe, climate efficient and resilient, accessible, affordable housing, fair housing, and inclusive communities. We especially value the critical need to preserve the homes we have, build new homes, find innovative solutions to our nation's housing supply issues. We cannot make sure our values match this reality without you. Your partnership is critical. Your work to connecting people to housing to build sustainable and resilient communities to ensure our neighborhoods are inclusive and thriving is important and we need you now more than ever.
There's not a community in America, I think you know this intimately, where a person earning minimum wage 40 hours a week is able to afford a two bedroom at fair market rent. You fill the crush and the urgency day-to-day in our cities. Every investment we make in housing and in our communities is an investment in people. It's an investment improving lives. As we heard from Greg last night, we can't solve and ultimately end homelessness without housing. Housing is what helps make survivors of gender-based violence and trafficking find safety well-maintained and properly funded public and assisted housing paired with robust voucher programs provide critical supports to families with low incomes. Sustainable and resilient housing reduces family's energy burden helps us meet our carbon reduction goals. Ensures communities can withstand our uncertain climate future. Without housing, it's more difficult to get healthier or recover from addiction. Seniors and people with disability are unable to live with dignity without a home.
Children have no place to study and do their homework. Their parents struggle to maintain stable employment. Housing helps make our lives better. Yet each of you in this room knows how hard it is to ensure access for our city's residents to find safe, stable, and affordable housing. Since the great recession, the rate of new housing development has failed to keep up with household formation. We talked about that last night and the need for housing. The gap is wide and we need to deploy creativity and resourcefulness to turn the tide. So that's what y'all asked me to come talk to you about. I'm going to give you a few examples. I think you each have unique circumstances in your communities, but just to highlight a few opportunities over the past two years, the Biden Harris administration has deployed resources and investments communities large and small that are already making a difference.
In Rutland, Vermont leaders have used home and CDBG funds to transform and abandoned masonry facility into affordable housing with community spaces for socializing and supportive services that benefit people transitioning out of homelessness and High Point North Carolina leaders leveraged a section 1 0 8 loan to obtain more than 10 million in private capital to construct a multifamily rental development. The new development will ensure working families have a safe place to call home complete with a playground for children and a clubhouse for events in Seattle, local leaders leverage the historic funding provided by the American Rescue Plan to transition more than 5,600 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing. In fact, Seattle is one of more than a hundred cities and localities that joined our pledge to use federal resources to address homelessness with housing and supportive services. Commitment under House America demonstrated what is possible when the federal government investing communities and mayor step up and word in action.
In just 15 months, the House America community has helped house more than 100,000 individuals and families transitioning from homelessness into permanent supportive housing. Over that same period, those communities add in more than 40,000 new deeply affordable units to their pipeline. Now we'll work through some administration wide efforts. Some of you are recipients of a really creative resource. We deployed earlier this year to address unsheltered and rural homelessness with care. I think a lot of people have been posing questions to me about what are the administrative actions we could do without congressional initiatives and funding, and this is an incredible exemplar of that. We did get congressional authority to use some of our carryover funding in the homelessness space creatively and in new ways a few years back, this administration has taken that flexibility to new heights. I would say that both of these initiatives address key tangible needs that were a gap from the federal government before.
So we use that flexibility in two ways over the course of this administration. One, we've used it to fund the rapid unsheltered survivor housing initiative. This is an initiative that comes in after a disaster and helps address the housing needs of those who were previously unhoused before the disaster. Prior to this flexibility and our creative use of this funding, which Congress did not direct, we came up with on our own. We were leaving those folks behind. FEMA wasn't able to support them because they didn't own property before the disaster and the shelter services were time limited for the crisis, so those folks were left without an option. Now we can go in day one and help those communities. We've done it in Maui, we've done it in Florida and we're looking forward to doing it again because it's a moral calling I think for all of us to meet the needs of those unhoused when they face climate disaster.
Another part of that commitment is that we use the money to address unsheltered rural homelessness. We've never specifically targeted unsheltered homelessness with HU funds before. I know a lot of communities use our funds to address that population, but this year we awarded more than 500 million to help people transition from unsheltered rural homelessness into stable housing. That includes $486 million in grants to your COCs and 43 million in stability vouchers to pair with that money so that we can get folks into long-term, permanently affordable housing. These are just a few examples of what we can do when we work together to make communities better, to lower the cost for American families and help you confront the crisis every day to ensure our nation is prepared when disaster strikes and to build an America that works for everyone who calls this country home. We know what happens when it's not available.
There's an estimated shortage of 3.8 million homes in this country today. We use a conservative estimate. There are certainly higher ones available. That shortage has contributed to higher rents, higher home prices, and those fall on everyday people. People who find themselves cost burdened by the price of housing risk instability, displacement, eviction, homelessness. We have what it takes to fix this. We can remove barriers to development that discourage affordable housing production. Earlier this summer we announced 85 million in competitive grant programming to reward communities that are making progress on their zoning practices. Through a program we're calling pathways to removing obstacles to housing. Housing. It'll mark the first time we're making funding available to develop and implement housing policy plans, improve housing strategies, and facilitate the production of more homes. Addressing the housing supply shortage and removing barriers to affordable housing is a priority of this administration. That's why we release the President's housing supply action plan.
We've made incredible progress in all those fronts. It's not enough. We were in a conversation with DPC just last week where the director was asking us to explain our housing supply action plan committed to building a hundred thousand new homes. Why aren't we seeing homelessness go down? And we had to remind her the scale and scope of the problem is just so enormous that that is, like Greg said, a really great investment and it certainly was a meaningful difference to the lives of those who we helped. It's not enough to turn the tide. We're getting ready to launch two new competitive grant programs. I'd ask you to take a look out for soon. We're going to make 225 million available for manufactured housing communities and residents. We really want this to be not your traditional notions of manufactured housing. Folks are pushing the envelope in this industry and it can be really stable and meaningful housing for your communities.
And so think creatively about how you might compete for those funds. 75 million in grants to allow continuums of care to continue to build permanent supportive housing. Our goal is to give state and local leaders more opportunities to preserve and expand supply. We know you're going to join us in these efforts. Another resource I wanted to point you all to is the incredible amount of investment we've seen in the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure legislation. We've been working really hard with our partners across government to ensure that affordable housing is one of the eligible expenses for those funds. No one was more disappointed than we were. To see that build back better wasn't successful, but that doesn't mean we stopped on the innovation. We've been working really closely with our DOE partners, our treasury partners, partners at the EPA and transportation to prioritize and incentivize housing in all of their funding investments.
HUD's soon going to launch a federal funding navigator called Build for the Future. I've seen a demo of this pilot. Folks across HUD are really jealous of the quality that this team has been able to build, but it's really simple and user-friendly. It'll come out this fall and as city staff you can say your role, say what type of funding you're interested and it will populate with all of the funding opportunities across infrastructure, the IRA bill and make sure that you're seeing kind of who is eligible for the funding, who you need to connect with, who you need to collaborate with to make sure your cities get those dollars. Building collaborations for local partners, public housing agencies, utilities, energy offices, homeless continuums of care. I was talking last night with the folks from Houston about the convening power of local government and ensuring those groups work together towards the same end. You all are in a powerful place to ensure that type of collaboration. So I just ask that you continue to pursue policies that put people first lead with compassion and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you all.
Betsy Gardner:
We have the privilege of interviewing Victoria Brown, who's the Deputy Chief of Staff for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, better known as HUD, and we have a lot to dig into today. So I'm going to jump right into questions about how cities can work with the federal government to prioritize housing, specifically housing for folks who are either unhoused or are currently sheltered but not permanently housed. My first question, it's actually about what kind of support is offered to folks working in cities. Not so much in terms of funding, but in terms of either helping bring the community together around these issues and solutions or helping cities make maybe some kind of concrete changes like steps towards updating zoning codes to be more inclusive. How can the federal government assist with these things?
Victoria Brown:
Thank you so much, Betsy, for having me, and thank you for that question. It's one that's near and dear to our hearts. Our Secretary is a former mayor. She often tells me that was her favorite job and she believes that people closest to the local community are the ones who are best able to make change, and so we're really focused at HUD on making sure that we get to the community level. And to that end, we have been very active in the field in this administration. We just wrapped up a nationwide tour in which our principals, the heads of community planning and development, the head of public and Indian housing, our congressional and inter-government relations Assistant Secretary have all been out in the field answering folks questions, hosting round tables with business owners, with developers, with residents, making sure that we're understanding their pain points and providing help that's specific to them.
We called the effort HUD on the Road and we've got some great clips across your communities that you can check out on our social media to really highlight some of the innovative work that folks are doing, the projects that are being built, the ways that they're meeting tangible housing needs out in communities. It's been really exciting and we hope to do more of it as we move forward. Another opportunity I would highlight is our Secretary is really passionate about home ownership and the opportunity to get your foot in the door to build generational wealth through home ownership. I think many folks have been tracking our efforts on appraisal bias in the home ownership space and we're really proud of that work. We've also been working really hard to lower barriers for first time home buyers and one of the creative ways that we've done that is to host house parties nationwide.
And so we've had several virtual, we did one on the national mall with the Secretary and we've done one in every region that HUD serves. They're really fun ways to connect with folks who don't necessarily think of the home buying processes for them. We've got HUD counselors on site, we've got folks who connect you directly to resources that might be available in your community, whether that's down payment assistance or housing counseling and really start to get folks excited about the possibility of home ownership. We've never faced a more difficult time in terms of affordability, but that also means that the opportunity to pursue some of those programs, folks can start to get their credit ready to get their finances ready and be able to seize as opportunities as they present themselves to really build that goal if that's one for them.
Betsy Gardner:
Thank you. That actually kind of leads right into my next question in terms of being kind of on the ground and in the community, we know that there are some folks in cities, local diverse small businesses that are interested in being a part of a solution, whether that's building housing or renting out properties, but I know that a lot of the folks in cities can run into challenges when they're trying to assist these smaller businesses with being prepared and qualified to create housing or to rent out properties. So can you talk a little bit about how HUD can help to open up more opportunities for those diverse smaller businesses?
Victoria Brown:
Yeah, it's another area of passion for us and we've been leading by example. So we offer a lot of procurement contracts to small businesses through the federal government, and HUD has been a leader in bringing more diverse small businesses into our own contracting space, and we would love to see that replicated at the local level. We recently got our a plus scorecard from the small business administration on the diversity of our own procurement practices and we're really proud of that progress, but we're also eager to help folks who are trying to think through this. So we have regional administrators, 10 across the country, really great representatives of the Biden Harris administration's goals and Secretary F's goals and communities and encourage communities who are struggling with this to reach out to them. They can be liaisons to the small business administration and see how we can tap additional resources to help build up that capacity. I know that's what's really going to make us strong for the long-term. We've had a huge infusion of cash in pandemic relief and through the Inflation Reduction Act and other investments at the federal level, and we want to make sure that those investments are sustained because the ways that we've deployed those funds have built local capacity for the long-term.
Betsy Gardner:
This is actually, again, kind of perfect lead to my next question because the pandemic obviously was an acute situation and that was sort of a time to have some kind of immediate funding to address some immediate needs, and then there is the capacity for the long-term. So how should cities look at addressing the trade-off between the immediate needs and the long-term needs when it comes to folks who are unhoused right now, long-term development plans, and how does federal funding fit into both long-term capacity and addressing the immediate needs?
Victoria Brown:
Thank you. That's a great question and one that I think keeps me up at night has added a lot of gray hairs, but I mean the reality is that we've made a choice in this country that we don't have enough housing support for all the people who need it, right? We only serve a fraction of the people who are eligible for housing assistance and that reality forces difficult trade-offs at the local level. So I think that the audience you've gathered and the support you provide to city staff is so important as they wrestle with that. We talked a lot about the urgency that their day-to-Day forces them into and the difficulty that it presents in sort of carving out the time to think about the long-term strategies, and I wish that we didn't have to face those trade-offs. I wish that we could invest on both fronts at the same time.
That being said, I think there's a couple really important things to highlight in response to this question. One, I think all of us are acutely aware that in order to make traction in housing supply and lower barriers to development, we have to win public will in our favor, and that means making arguments that are compelling across political ideologies across the aisle and really being able to communicate the need for housing to regular folks. I often challenge our team that if they can't describe our policy solutions to the person behind them in line at the grocery store, then we haven't succeeded in telling our story. And so I want to make sure that as leaders in this housing space, we're able to communicate the crisis and the solutions in ways that resonate so that we can continue to garner support tactically. We know that investing your money in visible problems is really an important way to build that public support.
We hear a lot from folks about troubled properties about encampments, and we know as housers that that's often just the tip of the iceberg in terms of who's visibly struggling versus who's vulnerable. And we want folks to be investing in the vulnerabilities across the housing spectrum, but we know that making an immediate impact in those highly visible points of vulnerability is really key to helping to generate additional will for that multifamily development that's faced resistance or other opportunities that may be more long-term in your community. Another example I wanted to highlight in terms of the long-term investment, our funding is eligible oftentimes to support that immediate rental assistance need, but it's also able to support the long-term. And we're seeing communities creatively think about that long-term investment in really compelling ways. So we just awarded a 4 million loan commitment to the city of Boulder, Colorado, and they're proposing to use that loan commitment to develop the construction of a modular housing manufacturing facility.
That facility is an innovative way to produce housing, so they're using their HUD funds to build the factory that will continue to provide affordable housing to their community Over the long-term, the proposed factory design has the capacity to build up to 100 homes each year and help achieve the city's and regions housing goals. And so that's a really exciting opportunity for us and I think we're going to see more of that as we move forward of folks thinking about how to build the infrastructure to really solve their long-term problems with the funding they have now.
Betsy Gardner:
I think that's such a brilliant example, such a way to take a step back and then just completely come from this new angle and address the same issues in just such a creative way, which we often talk about the kind of lack of innovation in housing and some of that, well, a lot of that is rooted in a lot of different historical reasons and a lot of things that happened over the years to say who could get houses, who could get houses where, what those houses would look like. So I know that there is a showcase that you all do that can help show some of these really innovative ways that people are thinking about what could houses look like. So could you talk us through a little bit of that and then any other examples that are these really creative ways that people are trying to come at the problem in a very novel direction?
Victoria Brown:
Yeah, absolutely. I would say we are really proud of the work we've done on the Housing Innovation Showcase for the last two years. We've brought innovative housing models to the National Mall for display over the course of a weekend, and it's a really exciting event that I think sparks imagination. I've been able to take my young sons to it. It's really hard to translate the work that I do every day to my two and 6-year-old, but when they see these robots building housing, it's really fun and I think it gives us a new audience for what the housing of the future could be. I had the opportunity of staffing the Secretary when she came up to Harvard, I think a couple years ago now for the Dunlop lecture, and she got a lot of laughter in the audience when she said, how much lawn do you really need?
And you need to know that the housing of tomorrow is not going to be your grandma's house. And I think folks are starting to appreciate that more and more. When I went back to California with the Secretary, I'm from the Inland Empire and many of my family and friends are talking about building ADUs and looking at financing opportunities and wondering if they should go with prefab or stick-built, and I didn't have the opportunity to have those conversations with everyday folks in the past. I'm excited to see the energy that people have around meeting their family needs. It's the difference between being able to have your mom age in place or having young family members be able to start their journey as a family together in a home they can afford. And so it's really meaningful impact and it's really driving housing that I think meets the shifting needs of our generations. I have a friend who's a wheelchair user and she was able to go to this innovative housing showcase on the mall and see a tiny home that was built for her needs, and that was really exciting to me. And so just seeing the opportunity for folks to envision a better future, I think that's what gives me optimism, that this is a crisis that we can solve. We know the pain points, but I also think that if we can creative and innovative, there are ways forward that are going to be better for our communities overall.
Betsy Gardner:
I love aging in place considering that the 55 plus seniors are one of the highest growing homeless populations. And so to think about the needs of that community and how they could be maybe more within the community, they've always been in a house that's more appropriate for them as they age. I think that's such a great example. And also now I think maybe that the test should not be the grocery store person, but maybe can your two and 6-year-old understand. But yeah. Is there anything else that you wanted to add or anything that we haven't already talked about?
Victoria Brown:
Yeah, I think one thing that I wanted to just remind folks of who are listening to your podcasts, I know you have a really diverse audience and many represent our continuums of care and city officials who are looking at new funding opportunities. I think now's the time to challenge ourselves on braiding those funding opportunities together. I think we were hopeful that there would be a situation where we'd have really large scale investments in housing, and we have seen that that hasn't gained the traction in Congress that many of us who are advocates for it would want. However, there are resources available. There's still a lot of funding that came through the pandemic that folks are spending down long-term. And I, again, challenge folks to think about the investments that are going to make their communities more resilient for the future, build capacity, build infrastructure that they can continue to use those sustaining funds to support as that pandemic funding expires.
Another rich opportunity, of course, is that we pass unprecedented bills to tackle climate change through the Inflation reduction act and infrastructure. And we know that climate change and housing and transportation and housing are intimately leaked. And so thinking about how your community is deploying those resources to serve affordable housing goals is really crucial right now. And we've been partnering with our colleagues at the Department of Energy, at the Environmental Protection Agency, at the Department of Transportation, at Commerce across the board and at treasury to think about how housing can continue to be an eligible use for their funds. In many cases, we're prioritizing applications that include affordable housing goals. We're thinking about how tax credits, for example, benefit some of our low-income residents and that those benefits and energy savings accrue to those residents specifically as the investments are made in underserved communities. And so that's a really ripe opportunity.
We've been to a lot of housing sites where folks are struggling with those specific impacts on climate change, whether they can't get the right heating or cooling for their unit, the quality of their roof. I mean, heat pumps and solar are all really big parts of the investments that are being made, and let's make sure those trickle down to the folks that need it the most and who have the least resources to tap into that. So I would just your listeners to look out for that funding, and I need to give a shout out to an upcoming resource, not quite yet available, but available soon that my colleague, who's our Senior Advisor for Climate worked on in partnership with other agencies called The Build for the Future, and it's a navigator that speaks specifically to the position you occupy and the funding sources that might be available across the federal government to address these needs. We're hoping that it'll be a really user-friendly resource and that it's going to spur a lot more access to those funds as we move forward.
Betsy Gardner:
Well, I think that's a perfect note to end on looking towards the future at what folks can do. So thank you so much for coming to Harvard and talking with us today, and I hope our listeners take a lot away from this.
Victoria Brown:
Thank you.
Betsy Gardner:
If you liked this podcast, please visit us@datassmartcities.org. Find us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast was hosted by Steven Goldsmith and produced by me, Betsy Gardner. Thanks for listening.