In an effort to spur innovation, Innovation Time should be implemented in our agency as a formal institution allowing more employees to participate in transforming the way HUD does business. For real change to occur, employees must be able to collaborate and act on their ideas for making our work better, not just state them. If our organization wants to innovate, it must create some slack in the system for excellent employees to have time to consider future projects, not current problems. Organizations such as 3M and Google have implemented Innovation Time where they designate a portion of official work time, for employees to explore their own projects for improving the organization. HUD could allot a small percentage of time, perhaps as day a quarter or an hour a week, to allow employees to work on their innovative ideas or projects consistent with ideas posted via HUD Ideas in Action. Just imagine the potential to improve HUD’s processes in small but meaningful ways while at the same time increasing the satisfaction of employees if we had official time to work on our favorite HUD idea in action.

This is a novel idea but if HUD wants to celebrate its HUD employees in a novel way this is one way to do so. Ask them to share their ideas and or actions for sustainability. If they have already done something within HUD or have an idea that HUD could implement. Maybe they have worked somewhere else before their HUD life and being pro-sustainability did something that made a difference to the world. Ask me; I was a teacher before my HUD life and through my insatiable interest in sustainability, I educated my students hands-on about the availabilty of higher power (pun intended!) - alternative resources as energy power. I do fall in the Earth Day bracket.

Research shows when employees have access to a coach or mentor work is more productive with less conflict. All employees need to be able to have access either through a site or directly to discuss workplace challenges. When I was teaching, I was blessed to be working in a school with a school counselor whose service was not limited to "troubled" kids. Every child was sent to meet with the counselor for 15 minutes once a month. This provided a healthy outlet for all concerns and was also productive in that only the "troubled" kids did not get labeled as needing a counselor.
Making coaches available may also result in reducing the number of cases of workplace mobbing and bullying, on the premise that bullying is a by-product of ignorance.

What if HUD were to create a medium similar to 2006 Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus' Grameen Bank concept? Homeowners who have lost their jobs and are unable to pay their mortgage could be eligible to use their skills to create a business and compete for smaller HUD contract awards. For example every HUD office buys large amounts of paper from established businesses. However, based on completion of certain criteria if we award the contract to a homeowner who creates a paper supply business, we would be able to provide them an opportunity to work, maybe hire others for delivery etc while we continue to expend funds which we would have spent otherwise too. Since this is just an example it would not necessarily be limited to paper supplies. The list of possible products is numerous.

Let occupants of foreclosed houses stay at the property until payment arrangements can be made or the house is actually sold, but require them to maintain the property in an acceptable manner. Currently, thousands of homes have been abandoned and foreclosed and are sitting vacant in neighborhoods causing blight because of vandalism. As a result, property values of the remaining homes are dropping and states are demolishing homes to preserve the communities--homes that would have been otherwise habitable if the occupants were allowed to remain. Instead of evictions and abandonments, recommend that HUD should take a more active role and create a program that would allow the occupants to remain in the homes at: (a) the reduced, newly appraised value; and (b) a special helping hand lower interest rate that would allow the borrowers to make payments based upon income. The plan would have to be drafted, but it is workable if acceptable to the banks.

Jobs creation and retention is a large component of all HUD funded projects whether or not that is the purpose of the project. How many people are employees on a sewer line replacement project, how many people are able to obtain employment because case managers are available at a homeless shelter, how many people are employed building a new affordable housing development, how many people are employees at the center making meals for housebound seniors? This information is not collected at the national level; only those projects that the benefit is a business directly is job data collected and reported. This data is easily collected and only needs a forum to report. This should be an easy alteration within the current systems (IDIS, HMIS, etc.). My community has collected this information for the last five years and has been greatly appreciated by elected officials (local and national) and shows the full impact of HUD funds in our community. As these are templet jobs we report on number of people not FTE as the impact for that person means maybe that month they do not need state assistance or they are able to stay in their home for another month.

HUD should establish an intra-agency AFFH working group composed of personnel from FHEO, OGC, and relevant program offices. The working group would have regular meetings and focus on reviewing HUD programs to find ways to ensure that the programs affirmatively further fair housing. The working group could review one large HUD program and one smaller HUD program per year and produce a report for the Assistant Secretary of FHEO to the Secretary that would discuss potential improvements in the programs, recommended regulatory changes, recommendend guidance to be provided to recipients, recommended NOFA changes, and any needed legislative changes to the programs.