A HUD of dysfunctional community cannot promote healthy community. We project what we are.

Native American elders I’ve dealt with note that the core value of healthy community is respect. Every single societal problem you can name has disrespect at its roots, in some form. Native Americans note that from respect, grows cooperation, which is how humans survive.

A successful HUD would be a HUD that is a healthy community itself, applying all the tools to help all American communities become healthy. Another term for this is Therapeutic Community. Whatever mission is laid out by HQ, that is our core mission. It starts with respect.

Results are the crystallization of intent. What is HUD’s intent? What is HUD’s mission? A successful HUD would have a mission that touches people’s hearts, invites collaboration from everyone, inspires cooperation and enthusiastic participation, and gets the job done.

A successful HUD would be one at the “Wow” level of service. Slamming people disrespectfully, failing to act on their suggestions, playing head games, shuts people down. Every HUD employee I’ve dealt with YEARNS to give more, to do more to accomplish the mission. Their desires are at times blocked. If you really want a successful HUD, at the ‘wow’ level of service, it starts by letting employees contribute- whether to a HUDWiki, to a Best Practices database, to an outstanding written product database that other staff could consult, by topic, and copy from.

A successful HUD is one where we do more with less, and maximize value out of our funding and resources. That starts with implementing employee and even client suggestions.

Where is HUD’s weblog where Employees can post short descriptions of how they gave back to the community? How is this coordinated with the Federal Employee of the Year program, and HUD’s Employee of the Year award, in each field office, then each region, then nationally? You don’t have such an award? A successful HUD would. What you concentrate on grows. We need to SET THE EXAMPLE of healthy community, if we are going to propagate it. A successful HUD would set the example of healthy community- by paying attention to what we want more of.

Where is HUD’s web listing of at least our nonprofit clients, listing what they do in the community, and how people could help, through donations of time, goods, or funds? How was this integrated with other websites, such as Craigslist? How do clients do 99% of the data input? How are communities of interest formed from this, to help people network, and do more with less through cooperation?

Where is HUD’s web listing of stupid systemic problems that need to be fixed? That waste money? That staff can post to? What is the average response time? What is the average time from report to cure of problem?

Where is the wish list, sorted by project or neighborhood, for our residents to post their dreams on? Such as a computer center, along the lines of www.neighborhoodnetworks.org?

Where is HUD’s Congressional rep program, where congressional offices can nominate outstanding community leaders in their districts for statewide and national recognition by HUD, as they now nominate candidates for the military academies? The only cost need be certificates, if it’s set up right.

Where is HUD’s Best Practices contest database, the one with detailed questions so that when clients report a Best Practice, enough data is collected so the program can be copied? How is this coordinated with state housing organizations?

Where is HUD’s web page that allows anyone to input an email address, and a name, with some data, to send an email to recognize people who did outstanding service in communities? How is HUD asking local newspapers to send a copy of articles on good things happening in communities, into the HUD website, as a way of promoting their papers, and for HUD, promoting good things in communities?

Where is HUD’s web listing of all community building efforts that serve our residents, with data input by anyone, with wishlists, and where to send donations? And, of course, where is the site where such efforts can celebrate their victories?

All success in our programs starts with respect. How can we model this respect, in a fantastic way?

Using the 150 person max of The Tipping Point, require each city, to qualify for CDBG and other housing money, to have a pilot walkable, sustainable, inclusive community, in say 1-2 buildings. There are plenty of derelict buildings in most communities. Artists' lofts are something of a model for this. Include microenterprise and microlending, and job training WITH A REAL JOB at the end of it. Invite volunteers in to help, with specific tasks. Promote it as a therapeutic community, where people down on their luck can start over. Include Permaculture ideas- i.e. food bearing trees and bushes, and use the 100 edible wild plants cited in Tom Brown's Field Guide, or Linda Runyon's book, for ground cover. These wild plants are more nutritious than anything you can buy in the grocery store. All drug addicts and alcoholics I've ever seen were eating an extremely acidifying diet. Every indigenous healing I've ever looked at started with an alkalinizing diet. So offer an alkalinizing diet, using such plants. In traditional Vermont home treatment, alkalinizing diet would heal an addiction- i.e. make it so it wasn't there, there was no more urge- in 24-48 hours. The healthy pH range is 7.1-7.365 . Use other community building tools, like what Native Americans use, such as folk dance, medicine circles, and so forth, to re-integrate these folks into the community. Daytop has run a drug treatment program since the 1970's, and they are 88% successful at what they do. For that matter, this would precisely fit with the mission of many faith-based outfits. How is such community going to be built if there are no local models to copy from? We don't know what community health is any more, we know only the pathology of the average. At heart, we are all indigenous, but we build walls out of fear. Fun, and the healthy energy of community, outsell fear, though. Consider this quote: In the developed countries, there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one. Everybody today seems to be in a hurry. No one has any time to give to others: children to their parents, parents to their children, spouses to each other. World peace begins to break down in the homes. The greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted, unloved. The greatest suffering is also having no one, forgetting what an intimate, truly human relationship is, not knowing what it means to be loved, not having a family or friends. It is we, who, with our exclusion and rejecting, push our brothers and sisters to find refuge in alcohol and become drunks. They drink to forget the deprivation of their lives. Perhaps what people lack is not clothes or food. Perhaps they lack love, because I do not give it to them? Peace begins with a smile" - Mother Theresa
In New Guinea, they ended the traditional male initiation ritual into adulthood in 1977. It only took 2 years for gangs to form. Joseph Campbell noted that gangs are efforts by young men to initiate themselves, in the absence of mature men. They are dysfunctional as a result. Gang prevention programs are a joke. Kind of like weeding a vacant lot with a pair of fingernail clippers. They don't even do 5% of what they should. Humans lived in rather healthy communities until the Industrial Revolution, mostly, so it won't take a lot to get back to this. People need a way to drain the poisons in their soul, whether it is Medicine Circles, one on one listening as in www.rc.org, or some other way. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once said do what you can, where you are, now, with what you have. How else can this process begin, but to begin- now? Today, I brought in 2 boxes of supplies for a party to be run in the poorest area of town, for children who get nothing at all for Xmas. Even the Marines' Toys for Tots program doesn't reach there. I also have "Dream Books" in which children will write down their dreams, and books to be given to students to recognize academic achievement. I pass them on to a guy who spends all his spare time supporting his community. I did this out of my own pocket, on my own time, because I don't have time to wait for the lazy people who should be doing this to get off their hind ends.

Silicon Valley is the poster child for capitalism, the synergistic geography where smart private money supports cool ideas, creates jobs, boosts national productivity, and provides a handsome return for investors.

Less well understood about the area's development was the role played by the U.S. government in making it a success. "Particularly during the early years, the government played a critical role in shaping Silicon Valley," especially spending and funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, writes HBS professor Josh Lerner in his new book, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed—and What to Do about It.

Government has played similar catalytic roles in creating hubs of innovation is places such as Tel Aviv and Singapore. Such success stories often get lost against the common perception that government just bungles things when it wades into the private sector.

This would do many things for the economy. 1 -get people out of bad loans that reset or are going to and won't be able to afford it at the higher rate.(never understood why the banks don't want to work with people who can afford it at one rate but not at $1000+ more a month when the arm comes due and the bank doesn't want to re-write a piece of paper called a note and/or deed of trust. seems to be for no reason at all other than greed) wouldn't you think that it would make more sense to keep the payments going to the banks instead of owning a house. the banks are in the position to loan money, not sell homes. 2 - you wouldn't have to offer tax credits and put us in more fiscal and monetary debt. 3 - it would stimulate housing sales, thus helping the hardware store, loan officers, realtors, and all trades in between. 4 - It would also help the sentiment of the consumer as our wealth would start to rebuild from an equity standpoint and our sentiment towards the economy would start to improve. There are just many positive conditions that would exist by offering this and I hope that you consider more and add your comments by posting.

It is clear the man is an actual occupant and household member. The welfare office office was lied to while they claimed only the woman was there with her low income. Almost every woman with her hand out for taxpayer money has this situation. Not all but most. The man is helping decide on the house, helping move furniture in, seems to always be in the house and answers the phone. How dumb must we be to put up with this? Ask a landlord. How many times showing a house to a welfare case is there a man lingering in the background? Do some surprise house visits to see how many people not claimed in the welfare application are living in government financed rentals. They always say they are visiting or babysitting. How come non welfare cases don't always have grown men who supposedly don't live there hanging around babysitting?

The Spider and the Starfish precisely describes the correct context for delegation, in its description of how to set a balance between leaderless and hierarchical organizations. HUD needs suborganizations that are leaderless, and task-focused. The difference between the hierarchical predecessor to Wikipedia, which had all of 70 articles before it shut down, and Wikipedia, shows the power of such task groups. There are many people who care and know a lot, in HUD, who would jump at the chance to spend even 1/2 hour per day in a task group like this. The Apache server concept is kept up by volunteers. There are many other examples of this.

Banks are slow to respond to a short sale offer. Bank will not consider a short sale until an offer has been presented. Most banks take 4 months or longer to approve/disapprove a short sale. Most sellers by that point have stripped their homes of anything of value. Buyers have walked away, tired of waiting. Home goes to auction and then back on the market. It does not make sense to me why the banks take so long or why the banks fail to approve a short sale. My public school math says something in hand is better than nothing. Yet, I strongly suspect that banks are receiving tax write offs or other incentives from the Federal Government when they declare the loss. Too many loop holes in the system and the banks are double dipping...once from stimilus money and again from tax write offs.