Andrew Cuomo

WASHINGTON —  Washington, of course, has no Department of Cities to oversee the salvation of blighted urban neighborhoods. For better or worse, the mission to combat an urban cataclysm falls to a red-tape fortress known as HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But if HUD once was known as an emblem of rampaging bureaucracy, it also symbolizes some of the most powerful cross-currents that buffet U.S. politics today. As federal funding increasingly takes the form of grants to states, those dollars increasingly end up in leafy suburbs rather than needy cities. Trying to find the right formula for metropolitan areas is Andrew M. Cuomo, a tall, lean and determined veteran of urban policy who now occupies the secretary’s office.

Once derided by critics as the brash son of a famous father, Cuomo, 39, is now a leading national voice in the debate over the proper roles of government and private initiative in attacking chronic urban poverty and related ills.

In promoting Cuomo from an assistant secretary’s job, President Bill Clinton picked a product of liberal New York politics, a seasoned advocate for the homeless, an intense blend of idealism and pragmatism. He also is the son of Mario M. Cuomo, the three-term former governor of New York, and towering figure in the Democratic Party. “He introduced me to public service, and always in the light that politics is the honorable profession,” Andrew Cuomo, whose New York-accented oratory is reminiscent of his father’s, recalled recently.

Public service, as practiced in the Clinton administration, also entails a degree of financial realism that may depart from an earlier Democratic style. The president, in announcing his decision to make Cuomo successor to Henry G. Cisneros, described him as “a determined leader who gets it done. His test is never soft sentiments but hard results.”

At the untested age of 23, Cuomo helped run his father’s first campaign for governor. Afterward, he served as a dollar-a-year top aide and confidant to his father, raising eyebrows with a style some considered abrasive. But the younger Cuomo also won respect by launching a well-regarded program for the homeless. The key: a coordinated, “continuum of care” that helped people make the shift from the streets to permanent housing with an array of services, from drug counseling to job training.

Cuomo is married to Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and is the father of 2-year-old twins, Cara and Mariah. On the political side, he enjoys an alliance with Al Gore that might last long after 2000. Cuomo recently offered a range of his views in his 10th-floor office that features a sweeping view of Maryland, Virginia and Washington. In person, he is friendly, focused and a bit careful--no doubt aware that loftier political heights may beckon in the future.

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Question: A lot of the jobs created as a result of the strong economy are located in suburbs and smaller cities. Is there a mismatch here between where the jobs are and the needs of people in the cities?

Answer: That is a good point. If you look at the numbers, the number of jobs created are way up. The poverty rate is down. The unemployment rate is down. All that is good news. But within the numbers, there’s a second story that we have to start to focus on--which is where are the jobs being created, and what types of jobs are they? And how does the work force match up with those jobs? . . . There is a disconnect, to some extent, which we have to keep an eye on and we have to address.

Q: How are you going to address it? For someone in need of a job right now, a person in the inner city that doesn’t have a lot of skills, that maybe doesn’t have a car, who may not even know there’s a particular job available some place 10 miles away. That’s a pressing problem now.

A: I think there are two general approaches, understanding this is an issue that we’ve been trying to address for 30 years. One, start to look at the overall region and mobility strategy.

In other words, when you’re looking at Los Angeles, don’t just look at the city boundary of Los Angeles, look at the Los Angeles region and start to come up with strategies and initiatives that link people in the inner city with the jobs in the suburbs. Mobility strategy. How do you get the person from the inner city to the job in the suburbs? Reverse commute. Transportation strategy.

. . . The second general approach, let’s try to create jobs within the city that meet that skill set for the people seeking employment . . . . But we have to go down both tracks simultaneously.

Q: What about building more public housing in the suburbs?

A: That’s a possibility. You have to build more public housing. Because of the budgetary constraints over the past few years, you haven’t seen a lot of new building, period. Assuming that there are additional resources, the question is how are they best used? Do you build new units or do you provide child-care subsidies, or do you incentivize the private marketplace? There are different strategies on creation of new units. That may be a nuance on your question. But the basic point of how about housing opportunities, if you will, in the suburbs--we agree.

. . . Public housing, you go build a structure in the suburbs, put a sign on it that says public housing, actually construct a facility, a complex. That’s one way of providing housing nowadays.

Another way is by providing what’s called the tenant voucher--where you give a person, in essence, a rental subsidy. And you say to that person I’m going to give you housing counseling and mobility counseling and there will be a person who’s going to work with you, who’s going to try to get you out to go look at housing out in the suburbs--closer to jobs, there’s a different education system.

You might be interested in moving from the city to the suburbs, and with this tenant voucher . . . you’re not limited to any physical spot, you can move into any neighborhood you like . . . . It’s one of the main avenues we’re now pursuing.

Q: Speaking in broad terms, what would you say is the state of housing in the inner city right now? Is it worse than it was 10 years ago? Is there a growing problem?

A: I think, by and large, the housing situation has, in some places, improved; in some places it’s basically static. Some cities are seeing some of the highest home ownership rates in certain neighborhoods ever. Home ownership is really a bellwether of community stability and investment. If people are buying homes in a community, it is generally a good sign of redevelopment overall.

Some cities say the number of homeless has been decreasing over the past few years. Public housing is improving in most cities over the past few years--demolishing a lot of the really troubled public housing, building new public housing; less dense, more integrated, more townhouse style. It’s hard to generalize the question, but I would say either static or improving.

Q: One response by the administration was to create empowerment zones for the inner cities. But critics say that few are really thriving. Would it make sense to increase some of the tax or economic incentives for the empowerment zones?

A: I would think so. The concept of the empowerment zone was two-fold. There was A, tax incentives that would spur economic development; and B, a block grant to allow social services, training, geared toward that economic development. But are there creative ideas on use of tax incentives and tax credits? Sure, there are. We’re learning more and more every day. Are there options for more aggressive tax incentives than those we employed in the first round? Yes, there are. They cost more money, also, as in everything else. The bottom line is always a question of dollars and cents . . . .

Q: The agency you run now has sometimes been viewed as a symbol of red tape, mismanagement, waste. Do you buy that? And what are you doing to fix that?

A: I don’t buy it totally, but I buy it enough not to spend a lot of time arguing about it right now . . . . My highest priority at this time in this agency’s life is to improve the management: have zero tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse; make the department overall more efficient, more effective, more like a private sector business; get the taxpayer a better return on their dollar; and to do more good for the ultimate beneficiary.

I’ve been in the position about six months now, and I think we can already start to see the results of that priority. A national partnership with Atty. Gen. Reno, which we called a “Crackdown on Bad Landlords,” which is a very aggressive enforcement and prosecution campaign against landlords who rip off the taxpayer, and against landlords who operate less-than-satisfactory housing complexes and subject tenants to miserable conditions and destroy communities.

We are going throughout the entire portfolio with a magnifying glass, and when we find any signs of a rip-off, any sign of abuse, we’re zealous in our enforcement. And it’s starting to pay off.

Q: Is welfare reform going to create new demands and new problems for housing?

A: Welfare reform, if it works and where it works, will be probably the greatest contribution we could make to communities--period. What we’re trying to do is get people off welfare to work. That’s not only what the American taxpayer wants--which is much of the dialogue we have here in Washington. It’s also what the person on welfare wants . . . .

About half of the families in public housing are on welfare. So we’re working with the public-housing authority to work with the states in welfare reform to getting services, getting job training and make that transition.

Q: There are something like 5 million households that could qualify for public housing. At the same time, many in Congress would like to see public housing include a more varied income mix among the residents. Is there a built-in conflict?

A: . . . As you point out, there’s not enough public housing for poor people as it is today . . . . If you start to exclude the poor from existing public housing opportunities, you make a bad situation worse. At the same time, you have welfare reform going on--which is going to be pushing people from welfare to work. If welfare reform works and the person receives a job--let’s say they got paid minimum wage, about $10,000 per year. In many markets, the person would still need public housing to exist on the $10,000 a year, otherwise they won’t be able to eat and pay rent. So those two are going on at the same time, and they could compound the negative effect.

Q: But experts in the field generally agree that having a greater income mix is healthy for the community. What do you do?

A: . . . We don’t want to build public housing institutions, we want to build communities. The question is how you do that . . . . Our position is, the better way to achieve an income mix is by providing new housing opportunities enlisting the Section 8 program, or through new construction. Increase the overall stock, and as you’re increasing the stock and the housing opportunity, bring in a higher income person, family and create the mix that way.

Q: And housing is just one vital need. Jobs, transportation, child care, there are many other services the government might provide that could help the “have nots” move up in the world.

A: I think you see quite a few of them in the president’s budget. You see health care for low-income children. You see the HUD budget going up 30%. You see more community development banks. You see a $3 billion program--welfare to work; you see the earned-income tax credit; you see PELL grants. You see a lot of affirmative, progressive government programs.

But if the choice is between having those aid programs and having a strong economy--I would choose the strong economy as an urban development tool . . . . Do you know what I’m saying? If you said to me you have a choice, a strong economy, a growing economy or a large budget for service programs to help the poor, which would you pick? I would pick the strong economy.