The Washington Post recently reported that, just before the election, then Senator Obama sent a letter to John Gage of the American Federation of Government Employees - a union that includes many HUD employees. The text of that letter is below, with a few bits of our emphasis added:

Dear President Gage,

I am writing to present a few thoughts on my vision for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The Department’s mission—to promote affordable quality housing and community development available to all without discrimination—is critical to the well-being of millions of working families. As we tackle the effects of the current fiscal crisis on Americans, HUD must be part of the solution.

I am committed to appointing a Secretary, Deputy and Assistant Secretaries who are committed to HUD’s mission and capable of executing it. I know that the Department needs resources to successfully implement the expansion of programs required by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. I pledge to work with Congress to secure resources necessary to meet HUD’s important mission.

Because of the fiscal mess left behind by the current Administration, we will need to look carefully at all departments and programs. We plan specifically to look at work that is being contracted out to ensure that it is fiscally responsible and effective. It is dishonest to claim real savings by reducing the number of HUD employees overseeing a program but increase the real cost of the program by transferring oversight to contractors. I pledge to reverse this poor management practice.

I look forward to working with HUD employees and their union representatives. We face challenging times. Together, we can provide solutions to our nation’s financial and physical infrastructure problems.

Thank you, John, for everything you and your members do for America.

Sincerely,
Barack Obama

Here’s a look at now President-Elect Barack Obama’s prior statements on segregation, equity, and housing.If there are additional statements, speeches, or articles you know of please let us know and we’ll post them here.

-from then-Senator Obama’s campaign website:

• “Increase the Supply of Affordable Housing throughout Metropolitan Regions: Communities prosper when all families have access to affordable housing. Barack Obama and Joe Biden supported efforts to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to create thousands of new units of affordable housing every year. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will also restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and ensure that all Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs are restored to their original purpose.”
• “Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars, to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. As president, Barack Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.”

-from Obama’s Philadelphia race speech, March 18, 2008:

• “We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students. Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.”
• “In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.”

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