Evaluation of Agency’s Ethics, Cooperation, Leadership, and Legal Decisions

Evaluation of Agency’s Ethics, Cooperation, leadership, and Legal Decisions

PAD 599: Public Administration Capstone

Evaluation of Agency’s Ethics, Cooperation, Leadership, and Legal Decisions

Administrative Ethics

One of the articles that I found was about the accountability. The Department of Health and Human Services are struggling to manage the funding and operation challenges, deeply affecting the performance of the system and leading some agencies to rely on their own application systems. They are finding this to be harder and harder as the days goes on due to the fact that more and more people need more and more assistance. Due to the high number of grant applications federal agencies must handle, the office of Management and Budget created Grants.gov in 2002 to simplify and streamline the federal grant process. The Department of Housing and Urban Development posted 40 grant opportunities, received 4,817 applications through the website and paid $414,422 in contributions, but the National Endowment for the Humanities posted roughly the same amount of grants and received a similar number of applications, but only contributed $155,159. Now they are looking into the way that the agency uses of the Grants.gov system. “Grants.gov continues to experience persistent governance challenges, including unclear roles and responsibilities among the governance entities, a lack of key performance metrics, and communication with stakeholders,” the GAO report said. “Information on system performance and costs is necessary to clearly link benefits partner’s agencies receive with the costs they pay and may foster partner agency support for Grants.gov.”

The second article is on how HUD which is the Department of Housing and Urban Development is being asked by two congressmen to address concerns that a program to sell mortgages to investors in bulk auctions is harming homeowners. They are basically trying to help homeowners to avoid foreclosure while getting troubled loans off the FHA’s books. “Several recent reports indicate that the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) may be selling nonperforming loans for properties located in some of our most vulnerable communities to hedge funds and private equity firms via quarterly auctions without sufficient protections for homeowners and neighborhoods.” This seems to be a good move for the stakeholders and also one for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They have continued to sell mortgages through DASP after the center for Public Integrity report. Both articles are focusing on other ways of helping out people and helping out the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Leadership Influences

As Secretary, Castro’s focus is ensuring that HUD is a transparent, efficient and effective champion for the people it serves. Utilizing an evidence-based management style, he has charged the Department with one goal: giving every person, regardless of their station in life, new opportunities to thrive. The second way is that Under Castro’s leadership, the Federal Housing Administration lowered mortgage insurance premiums to make homeownership more affordable for responsible families. HUD also released its new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule to fulfill the full promise of the Fair Housing Act – helping families’ access strong neighborhoods with housing choice vouchers and empowering local leaders with new tools to invest in their communities. In July of 2015, President Obama helped launch one of Secretary Castro’s signature projects, Connect Home, which accelerates Internet adoption in 28 communities, providing broadband and electronic devices to children living in public and assisted housing.

Secretary Castro continues to strive to make housing a platform that helps folks achieve a better quality of life.

Before HUD, Castro served as Mayor of the City of . During his tenure, he became known as a national leader in urban development. In 2010, the City launched the “Decade of Downtown”, an initiative to spark investment in ‘s center city and older neighborhoods. This effort has attracted $350 million in private sector investment, which will produce more than 2400 housing units by the end of 2014. All of these things are ways that our political leaders have tried to help this program out. I feel that he is doing things that seem to be considered a success as far as helping out this program.

Legal Decisions

1) HUD continues to make progress in overhauling its operations to correct its management deficiencies; (2) it has improved its financial reporting to the extent that its Inspector General was able to provide qualified opinions on its financial statements for fiscal years 1996 and 1997, compared with no opinion on the reliability of its financial statements for fiscal year 1995; (3) it deployed components for improving its information and financial management systems, reorganized its resources by function, and established various consolidated or centralized entities for single-family insurance operations, the payment of rental assistance, assessments of HUD-owned or HUD-sponsored rental properties, and enforcement activities; (4) HUD refocused and began retraining its workforce; (5) a major contributor to this progress is HUD’s June 1997 2020 Management Reform Plan, a set of proposals intended to correct the management deficiencies that GAO and others identified.

Strategies for Consideration to Administrative Processes

One strategy would be to Ensure Compliance with the “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” Obligation

One of the basic principles in the Fair Housing Act and the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 is that the federal government, and all of its programs and activities, must take proactive steps to advance fair housing, not just to avoid discriminating. Unfortunately, the government and its grantees have not taken this mandate seriously. In order to make this statutory obligation a reality, we must make changes in federal programs and activities to avoid further segregation and promote wider housing choices for families.

The second strategy is Ensure that Fair Housing Principles are Emphasized in Programs Addressing the Mortgage and Financial Crisis

The current mortgage crisis has its roots in decades of discriminatory housing and lending practices. Exploitative predatory lending has had its most devastating effects in communities that are predominantly Black and Latino, causing an unprecedented loss of wealth to those communities Given this, it is critical that the solutions that have been proposed to address our current mortgage crisis comply with the mandate that all government housing and lending programs affirmatively promote fair housing. In the foreclosure context, this means assessing the racial impacts of alternative plans and seeking approaches that are racially fair— approaches that do not further segregate and isolate low-income communities of color, but rather promote diverse neighborhoods.

The third strategy is Create a Strong, Consistent, Fair Housing Education Campaign

Despite all of the evidence that deeply entrenched discrimination and segregation continue, and the evidence that large parts of our communities are at risk, there has been no national government leadership, and no national message, about the importance of these issues.

Recommendations for Improvements to Administrative Processes

One strategy would be to follow up on all of the strategies that are already set forward, by doing so you will be able to make a change and see a change in the end. Working towards these goals and strategies that are set aside will make this program stronger and better for each and one of their communities. By doing this you are working on improving the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

References

, L (2014) Grants.gov struggles to track its expenses while managing $500 billions in grants. Retrieved on February 16, 2016 from

www.publicintergrity.org

Bennett, J (2016) HUD loan investment program draws scrutiny Retrieved on February 16, 2016 from

www.publicintergrity.org

www.Civilrights.org

Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Housing and Urban Development retrieved on February 16, 2016 from

www.gao.gov

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development retrieved on February 16, 2016 from

www.portal.hud.gov

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