HUD: Embrace Sustainability, If You Want Federal Money

From Urban Land Magazine

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan tells Kenneth Harney and ULI that the message to private developers, planning agencies, and local governments is straightforward, “If you want competitive money, we’ve set sustainability as a criterion for all of our funds.”

“Real economic and environmental sustainability isn’t just about the kind of buildings we build, but about where we build them,” he says. As a cabinet member, Donovan is a surprisingly blunt critic of the federal government itself, which he says “created many of the incentives for the disconnect between where people live and where they work, where they go to school, where they shop.” Among the harmful government policies are trillion-dollar highway investments, insufficient investments to encourage public transit such as light rail, excessive restrictions and regulations that discouraged infill housing development, plus heavy tax incentives that continue to favor single-family subdivisions over affordable multifamily projects.

Urban Land Magazine interview with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan