Event Summary

Cisneros Addresses “Mortgage Meltdown”

Article by Barbara Garrison, from UDaily

Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the Clinton Administration, told those attending UD’s Louis L. Redding Symposium on “Affordable Housing and the Mortgage Meltdown” held June 6 in the Clayton Hall Conference Center that “we take for granted what our homes are.”

Cisneros said that as secretary of HUD, he had seen first-hand what it meant to families to lose their homes. “Our houses are so much more than just four walls,” he said. “It’s the way we build our lives, so when people are denied access to that stability, their lives are dramatically different.”

Along with losing shelter, he said, they are left “without their medicines, without vital papers, without driver’s licenses, bank accounts, children’s homework, clothing and without cherished personal possessions.”

The UD College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy’s Center for Community Research and Service and Institute for Public Administration jointly sponsored the symposium, which examined various aspects of the current mortgage-lending crisis in the U.S. and the need for affordable housing.

A panel discussion with U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, John Bravacos, HUD regional director and Sandy Johnson, Delaware State Housing Authority director, followed the keynote speech.

Cisneros said there’s enough blame to go around for the crisis—unlicensed and unscrupulous lenders putting people into mortgages they couldn’t afford, and mortgages being turned into risky securities sold again and again all over the world and now threatening to compromise the credit industry itself.

But, he said, rather than blame, the focus should be on solutions that will help the millions who have already lost their homes and the 2-3 million more who are in danger of foreclosure.

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