Today is HUD’s 50th birthday – that is, it was 50 years ago today that President Johnson signed the legislation adding a Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Cabinet. Here’s a photo of LBJ presenting a ceremonial pen to Robert C. Weaver, who later became HUD’s first leader.
Of course, we’ll all mark this anniversary in our own ways. If you want to join HUD’s own celebration of “50 years of creating opportunity,” complete with video testimonials and public housing success stories, click here, for a mere chronology, here.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that HUD has come in for plenty of criticism over the last five decades for “straying from its mission” to promote residential integration. For a recent example that appeared as an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun after the recent turmoil in that city, click here. For a critical history of the department published by ProPublica in 2012, click here.
A couple of historical notes: Weaver, who held three Harvard degrees and had served as a New Deal presidential advisor, was the first African American Cabinet secretary. Romney, who served as secretary during Nixon’s first term, was such an ardent champion of affirmatively furthering fair housing that he ran afoul of the White House and was forced out.
Three years ago a reporter could write:
“ProPublica could find only two occasions since Romney’s tenure in which the department withheld money from communities for violating the Fair Housing Act. In several instances, records show, HUD has sent grants to communities even after they’ve been found by courts to have promoted segregated housing or been sued by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
HUD has since stepped up its efforts, and the new AFFH rule is widely seen as a harbinger of more vigorous enforcement of the Fair Housing Act.
Here’s a video clip of LBJ’s remarks 50 years ago, including this nugget: “Our cities and our new urban age must not be symbols of a sordid society.”