The Department of Housing and Urban Development is launching an “urban Peace Corps” designed to recruit skilled professionals and deploy them in the agency’s 81 field offices, where they can work hand-in-hand with local groups to revitalize neighborhoods.
HUD wants to enlist 230 economic development experts, academics, bankers and others this year and 230 more next year, give them six weeks of training, and send them into urban centers in Chicago and other cities where they can act as the agency’s first point of contact.
They might help community leaders and elected officials design plans for utilizing government funds or combining funds from several sources. They also might help small business owners obtain loans or grants. Or they might help developers find suitable locations.
The program, known as Community Builders, is a major element of HUD’s management reform plan, which calls for a new focus on community outreach and direct customer service.
“We will start out this year with more than 200 recruits and, like the Peace Corps, we will expand over the years into a powerful movement for change, growth and self-empowerment,” HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo said. “Community Builders will bring to urban revitalization what the Peace Corps continues to bring to global development.”
It also will bring fresh blood to a cabinet-level agency that even Cuomo concedes has seen better days.
“We haven’t had a significant infusion of new talent in 15 years,” he said.
Cuomo is hoping the program, which is being run in partnership with Harvard University, will help restore the public esteem that was once associated with government service.
“People say with pride and exuberance that they served in the Peace Corps,” he said. “That’s their credential, they’re proud of it. And we want to get back to that sentiment.”
Cuomo said he also hopes to return HUD to its original mission, which was as a center of innovation and public policy rather than as a caretaker of public funds and programs.
The new initiative represents “a completely different philosophy than that just a decade ago,” Cuomo said. “We won’t dictate, we will be responsive. We will do what the community wants done.
“We won’t come in with any predetermined federal mandate. We’ll ask, `What would you like to do?’ and `How can we help?’ “
That change in mindset is welcome news to Mayor Paul Helmke of Ft. Wayne, Ind.
Instead of being just someone else from Washington, HUD’s Community Builders “will be on the streets of our neighborhoods where they need to be.” said Helmke, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Vice President Al Gore and Sargent Shriver, who served as the organizer and first director of the Peace Corps under President John F. Kennedy, also praised the effort.
“Community Builders will be a new kind of problem solver for a new age–home-grown experts trained in all aspects of housing and community development, empowered to make decisions, able to reach across borders to bring people together to find a common ground,” Gore said.
The program “is one of the most exciting new ideas I’ve heard about in a long time,” said Shriver, adding that participants could become the country’s “most effective ambassadors of hope and idealism.”
HUD hopes to fill its first class of recruits this fall with people from many walks of life.
In addition to the obvious candidates, it will be looking for directors from non-profit groups, school principals, law enforcement officials, advocacy workers, health care workers and technology experts, among others.
Those selected will be hired through the same civil service process as career government employees and paid the same wages and receive the same benefits as federal workers. But they will be in the highest paying top grades–GS 13-15–where salaries range from $53,000 to $101,000.
“We want to attract professionals with very specific, practical experience,” Cuomo said.
At a cost of about $750,000 a year, recruits will be given four weeks of training at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where case studies and successful models of community development will be emphasized. Then they will spend two weeks at HUD headquarters, where they will be trained in all aspects of HUD’s programs.
After that, they will begin working on the front lines in urban neighborhoods, where they will serve as team builders.
“We will be training and educating a new generation of leaders from all walks of life, drawing on the compassion and competence of people who live and work in hundreds of communities,” Cuomo said. “These smart, talented individuals will be HUD’s front door, welcoming change and building stronger, healthier neighborhoods.”
The Community Builder fellows will work alongside HUD career employees, 350 of whom will be designated as permanent Community Builders in all HUD offices.
The temporary employees will serve two-to-four year fellowships. But because of attrition elsewhere in the agency, their positions will have no budgetary impact.
