I didn't exactly take the weekend off - I spent it with Redstar and her MAS (do we still call him that?), and in addition to attending a lovely Christmas do at her Mom's house, with an entertaining car ride home debating our communist leanings, I also immersed myself in the new HBO vamp series True Blood, every inch as trashy as I suspected it to be.
It was just the right place to be to get what I consider to be the best news yet on Obama appointments - Shaun Donovan, the New York Housing Commissioner, will become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Red did the research on Donovan while we drank it in, and I had two urban policy PhD candidates to break it down. The short answer is that Donovan appears to have his eyes clearly on the issues we care about - affordable housing, sensible redevelopment of the inner cities that encourages poor and working people into the mix, public/private partnership, and an appreciation for minority voices and needs in the mix.
Donovan is also the most Roosevelt-ian appointment yet, as Roosevelt himself, coming from New York, dipped into the city's infrastructure to tap experts in housing, transportation and labor for his cabinet. That Obama reached into the Bloomberg Administration, and took one of his successful initiatives to heart - rather than, for instance, dipping into Chicago's less successful urban development arm - suggests, in the best way, that Obama hashis eyes on really making things work on the issues that probably matter most in this crisis - getting people housed and fed and protected from the worst.
To be sure, we need to hear more - Obama's spoken, vaguely, of a need for a "Metropolitan" approach- a buzzy phrase in urban policy that is meant to bring cities and their surrounding areas into cooperative work, but in practical application has been messy and less than fully successful, often to the detriment of the neediest populations in the urban core. Donovan's take on all of this isn't clear... but given New York's sprawling operations, he seems poised to speak most for the needs of the urban population first, and to promote efforts that don't just displace working class folks out to the burbs, where local governments will struggle with new problems, and few good solutions.
All that and a little Ho Ho Ho. And how was your weekend?
Nice! Here is a piece I wrote on Obama and metro policy this summer:
http://nycweboy.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/06/in-obamas-speec.html
- for your readers who want to know more...
Posted by: Redstar | December 14, 2008 at 07:46 PM
PS: I hear that town Red is a great place to live. Too bad no one can afford it!! ;)
Posted by: Redstar | December 14, 2008 at 07:47 PM