James J. Wilson, 59, has an impressive resume. The former attorney for the St. Louis city government is now a partner in a private law firm and also teaches courses on state and local government at St. Louis University's law school. Now he wants to give it all up, for two years anyway, to work for the Housing and Urban Development Department.
That's right--HUD, the federal agency created in 1965 that provides housing assistance and helps with community development and preservation.
But it's probably better known as the agency that was scandal-ridden all through the 1980s; that, in its own words, had become "the poster child for inept government"; and that remains the only governmental entity on the General Accounting Office's high-risk list for fraud, waste and abuse.
Yet Wilson is one of approximately 8,400 professional Americans--lawyers, doctors, teachers, labor leaders and politicians--who applied by the May 1 deadline to fill 230 positions in HUD's brand new "urban Peace Corps," the Community Builders Fellowship program. "It's harder to be idealistic when you are 59 instead of 25," Wilson said, although he added that "once government gets into your blood, it's hard to get it out."
The candidates selected will work full-time for two years, with the possibility of a two-year extension, in HUD's 81 field offices, serving as the agency's liaisons with local communities.
The initiative is meant to streamline HUD's community outreach. When someone applies for a loan to open a small business or just needs to contact the agency, that person will touch base first with a nearby Community Builder, instead of calling a HUD bureaucrat in Washington.
At the unveiling of the program in March, HUD Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo called the Community Builders "HUD's front door." Joining the 230 Community Builder fellows will be approximately 350 permanent HUD employees, called Senior Community Builders. According to HUD officials, this arrangement will combine the HUD employees' expertise with the urban professionals' community contacts and special skills. Next year, HUD plans to en-list another 230 urban Peace Corps fellows.
The Community Builders program, in fact, is just one component in HUD's management reform drive. The agency cut its workforce from its 1992 total of 13,000 to about 9,000 today. (Because of the money saved from this reduction, Community Builders will not cost taxpayers a cent, HUD says.) It's also committed to contracting out tasks to the private sector, and it has created a centralized enforcement body to quash waste and fraud.
For its part, Community Builders is an attempt to separate the agency's service and compliance functions so that HUD can become more responsive to its clients. "We really think [the Community Builders program] is a win-win," said Patricia Enright, Cuomo's senior adviser who's helping to organize the program. "We get a new infusion of talent. Our HUD employees get cutting-edge training from these people that they are working with, and communities in turn get folks from within the government as leaders in their community."
Not everyone shares her enthusiasm. Academics, urban policy experts and HUD's own inspector general have raised serious doubts about the program's effectiveness. Some see Community Builders as a giant public relations gimmick.
HUD officials expect these urban Peace Corps volunteers to exude the same idealism that exists in the Peace Corps and President Clinton's national service initiative, AmeriCorps. And if the applicants interviewed for this article are any measure, finding idealistic candidates for the program won't be a problem. "I've always wanted to join the Peace Corps. This is better than going to Bosnia--and a little safer," said Terri Williams, 36, a Community Builders applicant and the former mayor of Webster Groves, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.
But Community Builders is hardly your typical corps. For one thing, its participants will earn $50,000-$100,000 a year and receive the same panoply of benefits as civil servants. This is exponentially higher than the $5,400 lump-sum payment Peace Corps members earn at the end of their stay, and their small monthly living allowance. Or the $5,000 education voucher and the approximately $9,000 a year for room and board that AmeriCorps volunteers receive. Indeed, the income is probably one of the main reasons more than 8,000 people applied for the program.
The Community Builders will also be handed four weeks of training at Harvard University and state-of-the-art laptops, which HUD officials believe will move the agency "light-years ahead" in its ability to respond to communities effectively.
In addition, the program's participants won't be the 20-somethings who usually enlist with the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. (The average age of a Peace Corps volunteer, though, has increased to 29.) For the most part, the Community Builders will be middle-aged professionals with mortgage payments, big backyards, children, stock portfolios and graying hair. Call them the Minivan Corps.
On May 6, in Washington, HUD unveiled the prototype for its new local field offices where Community Builders will set up shop. These offices, equipped with stylish furniture and workstations, will feature touch-screen electronic kiosks for information on home improvement loans and how to file housing complaint forms.
HUD officials hope that those chosen to work in these offices will be granted a sabbatical or leave of absence from their workplace. They also hope to put the Community Builders in the cities with which they are familiar. If Wilson and Williams are selected, for example, they most likely would work out of the St. Louis field office.
Shortly after HUD selects its 230 Community Builders around August, the urban Peace Corps volunteers will head to Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where they'll take a two-week crash course in community development. The curriculum will focus on sharpening their skills to become good negotiators, listeners and facilitators. Next, the Community Builders will travel to Washington to learn about HUD and its programs, and after that, they will finally head to their assigned field offices throughout the country. On completion of their first year in the program, they will return to Harvard for an additional two weeks of training.
Once the two-year stay expires, though, HUD officials want the Community Builder alumni to keep their hands in urban development. "We also expect after they leave their service with HUD, they'll go back into communities and still be Community Builders, but working through the jobs or organizations that they came from," said William Apgar, HUD's assistant secretary-designate for policy development and research.
Yet for many knowledgeable observers, this vision of a revolving door of Community Builders helping to improve communities and housing for America's poor is a pipe dream. Ron Utt, an urban and housing expert at the Heritage Foundation, said that HUD housing projects, which, he explains, are the agency's core responsibility, are plagued by high crime rates and vandalism, problems that are only aggravated by these areas' low economic base and substandard schools. A program that recruits idealistic urban professionals to work for two years, he argued, isn't going to eliminate those conditions.
In addition, one former HUD employee, who still closely follows the agency, called Community Builders "PR fluff and no substance" because one additional person working in Baltimore or Cleveland won't make a difference in changing a mismanaged HUD. The former employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said that the program was just another example of Secretary Cuomo trying to grab attention and promote himself.
HUD officials point out, however, that Community Builders was never intended to be a cure-all. "If all we were doing was Community Builders, then that would be a telling thing. But the fact is that Community Builders is tapping into an organization that's been totally revamped from top to bottom. . . . It's the final piece, not window dressing," Apgar said.
Other critics contend that bringing in these outside Community Builders with attractive salaries and other perks is a slap in the face to the former HUD employees who've been axed in the agency's overhaul. "We are not an expanding agency. We are a contracting agency," said Tim Coward, president of the national council of local HUD unions. "[The Community Builders fellowship] doesn't send the right signal to our employees." HUD officials stress, however, that the Community Builders will not be displacing the agency's employees. Coward said that he doesn't have any objections to the concept of Community Builders; his objections rest with bringing in people from the outside.
Furthermore, Sam Staley, an urban affairs expert with the libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute, questioned the fellows' short stay, arguing that a two-year stint is hardly long enough to forge the contacts necessary for community development. And a 1997 report by HUD's inspector general raised the concern that these Community Builders will lack the expertise to be effective. "It takes years to develop technical proficiency and knowledge in just one of HUD's major programs," the report stated. "If the Community Builders are unable to acquire program expertise, our concern is that these positions may do little to assist communities and further HUD's mission."
HUD's Apgar, though, doesn't see a problem with the short stay or the fellows' lack of expertise. "HUD has no shortage of experts. Our average employee has been here for 15, 16 years. . . . So that doesn't disappear. The Community Builder is just a link between the community and all of this expertise."
The success of Community Builders won't even begin to be calculated until the first 230 participants finish their tours of duty. Nevertheless, with applicants such as Randy Parraz, this urban Peace Corps has at least attracted the right stuff. Parraz, 30, is a community action coordinator with the AFL-CIO in Washington, and he's been working in California to defeat that state's ballot proposition to stop the unions from automatically using dues for political purposes without members' permission. But if he's selected for HUD's program, Parraz will take a leave from the AFL-CIO. Community Builders is "too good of an opportunity to pass up," he said. "I love challenges. I love to be able to create things."
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