Shaun Donovan: Obama's Secretary of Housing & Urban Development

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According to Newsweek and New York Times. Newsweek's write up: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/poweringup/archive/2008/12/12/donovan-for-hud.aspx

The Times has a good profile of him:

Mr. Donovan has experience in all facets of the affordable housing market, having worked in both the nonprofit and private sectors and in academia as a scholar of housing policy. He has even worked as an architect in New York and Italy.

With permission this year from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who hired him in March 2004, Mr. Donovan took a leave of absence to campaign for and advise Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign. Mr. Obama is expected to name Mr. Donovan to the housing post on Saturday, in his weekly national radio address.

“Shaun Donovan has been one of the most effective housing commissioners in New York City’s history,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who had championed Mr. Donovan. “At this time, with the housing crisis raging, he is exactly the kind of person we need as HUD secretary.”

As chief of New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Mr. Donovan is in charge of the Bloomberg administration’s $7.5 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan to build or preserve 165,000 units for to low- and moderate-income families, housing up to 500,000 residents, by 2013.

More about his long career here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/us/politics/13appoint.html

I confess to knowing nothing about him, not being from NYC, but he certainly sounds like a whiz kid.

[RepublicanElephant]

1. Biography of Commissioner Shaun Donovan

"Mr. Donovan was appointed Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) in March 2004 by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. HPD’s $7.5 Billion New Housing Marketplace Plan to build and preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing for 500,000 New Yorkers is the largest housing plan in the nation. In September 2008, Mr. Donovan, together with Mayor Bloomberg, announced that the Plan reached the midway point on schedule with more than 82,500 units funded.

Before joining the Bloomberg administration, Mr. Donovan worked at Prudential Mortgage Capital Company as managing director of its FHA lending and affordable housing investments. In the affordable housing arena, Prudential Mortgage Capital’s portfolio totaled more than $1.5 billion in debt, including Fannie Mae, FHA and other loan types.

Prior to Prudential, Mr. Donovan was a visiting scholar at New York University, where he researched and wrote about the preservation of federally-assisted housing. He was also a consultant to the Millennial Housing Commission on strategies for increasing the production of multifamily housing. The Commission was created by the United States Congress to recommend ways to expand housing opportunities across the nation.

Until March of 2001, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing at HUD, the primary federal official responsible for privately-owned multifamily housing. At HUD, he ran housing subsidy programs that provided over $9 billion annually to 1.7 million families and oversaw a portfolio of 30,000 multifamily properties with over 2 million housing units. He also served as acting FHA Commissioner during the presidential transition.

Prior to joining HUD, he worked at the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) in New York City, a non-profit lender and developer of affordable housing. He also researched and wrote about housing policy at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and worked as an architect in New York and Italy. He holds Masters degrees in Public Administration and Architecture from Harvard University."
http://www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/about/bio-shaun-donovan.shtml

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2. Anyone from NY know how well the affordable housing has been working out...?

It would be interesting to know his record so far.

[Thrill]

3. Reading up on him. He sounds very impressive

Not sure if he went to school with Obama but he is another Harvard grad

[Uzybone]

4. A white architect?

Who has worked on major projects before? Isn't HUD usually saved as a throwaway post for ethnic minority politicians? Why is Obama doing things so different than we are used to?

[4lbs]

5. That's because he's picking people that are smart, are experts in their chosen positions, and have a

track record of getting things done.

After 8 years of Dubya appointing his friends who would rather be breeding horses, this is CHANGE.

:D