Politics > Former HUD Secretary Now Leads CityView

AP Interview: Long Out Front, Former HUD Secretary Cisneros Now Moves Behind Scenes

Instead, he has made an under-the-radar career move: building affordable houses for working-class residents of some of America's grittiest inner cities.

Cisneros, mayor of San Antonio in his early 30s and later housing secretary in the Clinton administration, is chairman of CityView, which provides capital to contractors and assists local governments, neighborhood groups and others with a stake in getting the homes built.

"The idea of helping revitalize cities with physical projects and them taking the form of housing really gives me the kind of fulfillment that I seek in my work," Cisneros said in an interview.

CityView's homes are what he calls "work force housing" basic yet attractive houses built in the urban areas that typically are passed over for new development. Prices are set by local market conditions, which means a house that sells for well under $100,000 in East Detroit might cost a few times more in East Los Angeles.

Cityview operates in Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland and Dallas.

The Detroit project alone envisions 3,000 new homes over the next 10 years.

"If that can be done in Detroit, it can be done in a lot of American cities," Cisneros said.

Being near the market's low end, CityView's houses are somewhat insulated from the growing risks in the nation's overall housing sector, where rapidly rising prices fueled by low interest rates have prompted Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others to warn of a looming downturn.

"Some people are going to be coming down to that kind of housing, others are going to try to reach up to it," he said. "It's a good place to be."

CityView is based in the Los Angeles area and the huge California Public Employees Retirement System pension fund has invested more than $100 million to help build houses for CityView. Partners in the venture include Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc. and Saybrook Capital LLC, a prominent Los Angeles investment firm.

He was elected mayor in 1981 at age 34, staying for eight years before going into business, and in 1993 he was picked by President Clinton to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 1997 he became president and chief operating officer of Univision, the Spanish-language television network, but resigned in 2000 to start a real estate development company, American CityVista.

As housing secretary, Cisneros attempted to change the notion of public housing from crime-plagued high-rise buildings to safer, lower-density projects.

He also formed the idea that became the foundation for CityView.

"I was a little lacking in vision as mayor I failed to understand the significance that housing and the revitalization of housing means for a city," Cisneros said. "We spent a lot of effort trying to revitalize neighborhood business districts, create neighborhood industrial parks, assumed that if the jobs come somehow the revitalization will occur, the businesses will come. ... Well, no, they won't because nothing has changed about the disposable income characteristics of the community."

Cisneros left HUD in 1997 while being investigated for allegedly lying about payments he made to a former mistress to keep her quiet about their affair. He was indicted on 18 felony counts, but pleaded guilty in 1999 to one misdemeanor and paid a $10,000 fine.

Asked where he sees himself in a decade, Cisneros rattles off a to-do list that makes clear he has no plans to slow down.

"Not just 10 years from now that would make me 68 but 10 years after that and 10 years after that," he said. "That's 30 years of work. I think I can handle that."

2005-09-04