The New York Times' Adam Nossiter reports that FBI and Housing and Urban Development agents raided a New Orlean nonprofit housing agency intended to help Hurricane Katrina victims. The Affordable House Ownership Program was supposed help elderly and poor residents displaced by the ...

The New York Times' Charlie Savage has a nice follow-up story on the damning Justice Dept. Inspector General report released Monday on politicized hiring practices. Savage leads with a 2005 email sent by the White House's office of political affairs to executive branch ...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has earned mixed reviews in his response to the subprime mortgage crisis. But the New York Times' Stephen Labaton portrays Paulson today as taking charge in Sunday's multibillion-dollar bailout of public-private mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It ...

As Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pointed out in the Washington Post today, Democrats, in principle, are mostly opposed to school vouchers. However, they have been for "Section 8" housing vouchers. This federal voucher system, enacted in the early 1990's and carried out by the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, is designed to get predominantly black families out of the urban projects and into safe neighborhoods.

But in a controversial Atlantic magazine piece, Hannah Rosin explores whether the HUD program is actually leading to yet more urban danger zones. Rosin speaks with residents in Memphis who say that when residents move away from high-crime housing projects the gangs and violence move with them.

The Dept. of Housing and Urban Development has been roundly blasted for neither working to avert the subprime mortgage crisis nor properly responding to it. But how much did HUD actively cause the crisis? According to the Washington Post’s Carol D. Leoning, quite a bit. HUD didn’t properly police ...

At a critical moment for the U.S. economy, the Bush Administration is sending mixed signals about its plans for the largest and most important investment market in the world – the U.S. housing market.  It looks like all the experts in the world don’t really understand the problems we face – or at the very least no one in government is getting them all to work together.  A strong guiding hand is needed at the tiller right now, or we could have another shipwreck.  So isn’t it time for President Bush to buttonhole a key government manager to coordinate all these recovery efforts?  (Maybe that person should be the Secretary of the Treasury? I realize that kind of sarcasm is completely uncalled for.)

The House of Representatives today passed a bill designed to help homeowners facing foreclosure after taking out subprime loans. The bill passed along partisan lines and could face a veto from President Bush. 

As the Washington Post’s Dina ElBoghady’s reports, such legislation could put an overwhelming ...

 Under now-departed Secretary Alphonso Jackson, Housing and Urban Development has been roundly panned for not addressing the mortgage crisis.  But don't blame that on Federal Housing Administration head Brian Montgomery. 

The Wall Street Journal's Damien Paletta reports that Montgomery has been with the Bush Administration from the start and has ...

Last Sunday, the Washington Post took a look at how recently departed Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson ignored the mortgage crisis. Today the New York Times’ Rachel Swarns examines the other key component of Jackson’s dubious legacy—millions in housing contracts to his friends.

The Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig put the final nail in the coffin yesterday of Alphonso Jackson’s tenure as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In speeches and interviews throughout 2007, Jackson conveyed a “home ownership at all costs” approach to helping low-income Americans, ...