Obama housing nominee pledges more foreclosure aid
President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for housing secretary pledged Tuesday to mount a more aggressive response to the foreclosure crisis as he prepares to take the helm of an agency under fire for being slow to react to the housing bubble.
Shaun Donovan, the 42-year-old commissioner of New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, has received acclaim for his leadership of an effort to add 165,000 reasonably priced homes to New York’s ultra-expensive housing stock by 2013.
He will face more sweeping challenges in taking over the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which lawmakers say has failed to respond effectively to the surge of foreclosures and defaults.
“Housing is at the root of the market crisis we are now experiencing, and HUD must be part of the solution,” Donovan said, according to remarks prepared for delivery at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday.
