Episode 3 – Julián Castro on Housing Policy

Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. We take you behind the scenes of policy

with the people who helped shape it. For more, visit LBJ. Don’t you, Texas?

Welcome to Pile Sand Purpose. My name is Angela Evans, and I have the privilege of being the dean of the

Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs here at the University of Texas at Austin. My special

guest today is the honorable Julian Castro. Mr. Castro started his political career

in his hometown of San Antonio, just down the road from Austin as a councilman and then a mayor.

He was then appointed by then President Barack Obama as secretary of the Department of Housing

and Urban Development. Today, we’re so fortunate to call Mr. Castro one of our

own. He has since the fall served as the deans distinguished fellow and the fellow

of the Davola chair in international trade policy right here at the LBJ School. He’s been a tremendous

asset to the school and to the students. He’s been generous in his time and is

sharing of his knowledge and expertize. This week, we’re celebrating the fiftieth anniversary

of Lyndon Baines Johnson signing of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination concerning

the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion,

national origin or gender. We have right here a ready made expert has a

former HUD secretary. Mr. Castro knows as well as anyone some of the most pertinent challenges we’re

facing in America today. So we’re fortunate to have him here to talk with us today about his experience

not only at HUD, but also as mayor of San Antonio, where housing obviously was one of the more important

issues that he faced as mayor. So welcome, Liane. Thank you. It’s great to be with you.

So first, let’s talk up through your career a little bit. Your career took you from councilman to

mayor to then HUD. When you think about the trajectory and if you think about the threat of housing.

Talk about housing. Really how housing was an anchor for you in terms of where you wanted to go and

where you are now in terms of public service. Yeah. I first got interested

in public service when I went away from my hometown of San Antonio and

I could see my home community for the first time with a fresh set of eyes.

My brother and I went away to college at Stanford and over there I saw a community that seemed

to have higher income levels, higher education levels seem to be more innovative and ready

for the future. And I also didn’t see that many folks who had come

from the community that I come from, from the neighborhoods in San Antonio or even the city

in general. And that was the beginning of me thinking that

I wanted to dedicate some of my time and effort to making sure that other folks could have the same

opportunity that I did. And a lot of that was related

to the neighborhood that walking in my brother walking and I had grown up in on the west side of San Antonio.

It was low income to lower middle income. We went to the public schools and I could see

at that time, you know, even as a 19 or 20 year old, how

much of a difference it makes, what kind of opportunity you get based on what

neighborhood you live in, the housing that you have, the access that you have to

different educational institutions, different amenities in life.

So, you know, it’s been a part of the spark for my decision to go

into public service in the first place. So when you think about that as a young man and knowing

that and having that realization, you know, sort of the light bulb goes off at some point very early in your life

and then you come back and you’re running for council and then you run for mayor when you’re thinking about

those trajectories. How did that influence of just understanding the neighborhood

and its environment, how did it affect you when you ran and in you governed in these different state,

local and federal positions? I think it always grounded me. First

of all, when I moved back home after law school to San Antonio. I didn’t move too far away from

where I had grown up. And so I was still interacting with a lot of the same people are

still seen everyday the challenges of the folks in terms of housing, in

terms of economic development, in terms of educational opportunity. So

I think it mattered that I lived the experience of growing up in those neighborhoods that that were some of the most distressed

in the city. And then that I returned to that area and I’ve really

tried to make my time in public service about creating opportunity

for people, focusing on opportunity. When I was on the council, that meant

making sure that we could make good infrastructure investments. That’s a lot of what council members do. They

focus on streets and sidewalks and sort of the basic services out there. As mayor, it meant

pushing the envelope in terms of San Antonio’s investment in educational opportunity.

We passed something called pre-K for s.A, which was a ballot initiative to raise

the sales tax by an eighth of a cent to significantly expand high quality, full day pre-K. The voters

passed that in 2012. And the young child. Four year olds who are able to take advantage

of that are largely from families that are lower income and often

don’t have the opportunity to get a great educational start in life. And then at HUD,

it influenced how I saw that job. I wanted the folks who lived

in public housing and HUD assisted housing to be like the sun that opportunity

services would orbit around. So whether it were improving the schools or

better health care or access to transit, I wanted to make sure

that we could create an envelope there where they had more opportunity

for good jobs and quality of life around them. One of the things some as you’re talking,

I’m thinking about a lot of these decisions in a lot of these environments are outcomes of policy. So when you think

about President Johnson and the fiftieth anniversary of many of his pieces of legislation,

housing was really an important piece of a policy framework trying to get at this very issue.

When I think about this in your short life, in your short career, how do you see that federal

initiative in terms of the Fair Housing Act really influencing the kinds of decisions you

made and the kind of circumstances that you saw? It’s been essential to the ability

of cities to prosper more and especially vulnerable communities.

It’s been essential the Fair Housing Act for people

of color or other folks or vulnerable communities to be able to move into higher opportunity

areas over time. Yeah, it’s clear that we still have a ways to go, but it’s also

clear that we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress since Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing

Act. You see some of the most important. If you had to name the one or two top things that you are so

you feel are really the most important things that this act did. Number one, you see

more integration in a lot of neighborhoods, especially a lot of higher opportunity neighborhoods

than we used to see. And that’s because this Fair Housing Act was instrumental

in helping to root out outright discrimination. Now,

you know, has to be pointed out, we’re not all the way there. That still does happen. And we have Fair Housing Act

enforcement right now under the law. But 1968 versus 2018 is

night and day. So the number one thing, the number one accomplishment of this Fair Housing

Act and the legacy of Lyndon Johnson is that it opened up the

opportunity for people of color and other folks from protected classes to get into

neighborhoods that they wanted to get into, where they had better schools, they had more access to transit, they had better

job opportunities. And that’s been tremendous for families across the United States.

Well, one of the things you did when you were secretary of HUD in 2015, you rolled out some new

rules that strictly more strictly combat racial segregation in residential

neighborhoods. Talk to us a little bit about what motivated you in that in terms of the regulatory

structure and determining how best it worked for you. And did it really meet the objectives that

you set out for them to meet? I believe in equal housing opportunity.

I very much am a fan of the Fair Housing Act and the work of Lyndon Johnson and all

of the advocates who helped make that possible. You know, that was signed only a week after the assassination

of Martin Luther King. And he and folks in the movement had pushed

for fair housing legislation in 1966 67. And then Lyndon Johnson signed it

on April 11th of 68. In 2015, we accomplished

something called affirmatively furthering fair housing. The act says that the secretary of HUD has the

obligation to affirmatively further fair housing, but nobody had actually put that into a

rule that it hadn’t been given any statement of aspiration. That’s right. Why is ya

sure? Yeah. And and, you know, it’s kind of sounds like a bureaucratic phrase, right? It’s about

not the warmest of phrases, but basically our rule said to communities

that receive HUD money, federal taxpayer money, that you have to become more serious

about ensuring equal housing opportunity in your community when you invest your Reesa, your federal

resources, when you do your development code.

All of those things that go into creating equal housing opportunity. It had been tried

about 20 years earlier in the Clinton administration, and they almost got it over the finish

line. We were proud to get it over the finish line. And what it required communities

to do, local communities, is to put together robust plans, meaningful

plans on how in the years to come they’re going to actually create more equal housing opportunity.

I believe also that over time, it’s going to have the effect of further desegregating

our country. And that’s a positive thing right now. Of course,

in Washington, there’s a bit of a different direction that the current administration is going in. But

I do think that the. He is out of the bottle and that we’re going to continue to get better and better

because of this rule, fervently furthering fair housing that we promulgated

does what they’ve always been very curious about. You started as a councilman, so very, very close to your constituents.

Then there’s a mayor. You’re still close. Not as close as if your councilman. Then you go to the national

level. How does one in your position stay in touch with the very people

at the highest level creating policy? How do we keep in touch with those people that we think that

we’re really serving? That’s a great question. I enjoyed working at the local

level, in part because you are so close to the people that you represent and

you can see the the impact of your work very directly in

the community that you drive around in that you go and spend time with your family in

the neighbors that you talk to. It’s different at the national level and you’re not as close to the people. The

way that I tried to bridge that gap was to make sure when I traveled for HUD

business, whether it was about the Fair Housing Act or public housing

or vouchers or whatever it was to actually meet with the people who were impacted

by our work, folks who lived in public housing or who had housing choice vouchers or

veterans or others who were experiencing homelessness so that I could hear firsthand

how they thought that the program was working, you know, ways that we could improve it. All of those

things that that you can only learn from the firsthand people that

are actually dealing with the policy that is said. You know, that’s how I tried to keep in touch

with real people and to stay grounded. I think that’s very, very hard. And I

think it has to be something that is an intentional goal when we’re doing that, because the farther

away we get from the actual constituencies, the more removed we are from real life situations

at something. At the LBJ school, we’re trying to instill in our students today as they go out, they

really have to stay in touch with the very people that they think they’re serving. Because you came into the

federal sector at a very high level in an area called housing, yet you were part of a presidential

cabinet. So when you think about the cabinet and the discussions of policy at that level

and this again is that, you know, is an Obama administration, not every administration. So how did that reflect on your

ability to work with others? Because you talked at the very beginning of this about how important education

is, how important transportation is, how can we continue to make sure that people

at the very highest levels who are very busy. Talk to each other and collaborate around these larger

areas. And how did you do that as secretary? Well, fortunately, I came into the administration in 2014

when President Obama had said a strong blueprint of

cabinet agencies, these departments working across silos. They

started off with a really neat initiative called Sustainable Communities in 2010.

That was a partnership with HUD, the EPA and the Department of Transportation

to invest in both planning and and actual implementation of

policy that connected all of those things together, housing, transportation and a better

environment. And then champion things like promise zones and choice

neighborhoods at HUD that similarly looked across those silos of how we can

put policy together to improve overall quality of life and economic opportunity. So the answer is

that by the time that I got there, all of these cabinet secretaries were already kind of working

together in this mode because of President Obama’s leadership. And so when we worked

on things like Promise Zones or we worked on Choice Neighborhoods or Secretary

Fox, if the department transportation’s working on Tiger grants, we would communicate and share ideas

and think through how we could work more closely together. My hope also is that

the example that that said and the cities that started to do that to

an even greater extent because of the leadership that the federal government showed.

My hope is that that will continue in those local communities and that the federal government also will continue

to do that in the years to come. I think some people forget that the seating is just not the

the secretary level is getting together and talk, but there’s a whole echo system

with them as well, an infrastructure within their departments that they start getting this ideas

and they start working on this. So regardless, you seeded an idea and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

But that kind of initiative at the very high level is almost like a bully

pulpit, kind of an initiative that says this is important, Justin, we can do that. Yeah. And, you know, maybe

the best example of that cross agency work was the Obama

administration’s push to end veteran homelessness. It started in 2010 with a blueprint

called Opening Doors in the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Coordinated

the work of. 19 different federal agencies, including HUD, partment

of education transfer, take all of them, 19 different federal agencies, and because of that

coordination and very good coordination on the ground in many American

cities, we were able to see a reduction of veteran homelessness by 47 percent between 2010

and 2016. That’s how Washington should work. Congress did its part. They

made the investment in resources that they rightfully should for veterans who are homeless.

And because of that, you have thousands and thousands of veterans out there who now have a home

and who are living healthier, more productive lives. This is why I love these kinds of podcasts and

and talking to people, because people are often they may hear about it, but they don’t really listen to some

of the things that are done and how good policy can really seed good outcomes for

the citizens. I want to shift a little bit. I’m thinking of the future. When you think about cities

and you think about how people live and how they commute and how they go to work. Now, you’ve got artificial intelligence,

you have I.T., you have gentrification. There’s a lot that’s going on in terms of how you

think in the next 50 years, because this fiftieth anniversary, fair housing, when you think about the next

50 years, talk to us a little bit about what you think are some of the big challenges with these social

and economic shifts that are going on. Yeah, it’s absolutely fascinating. I mean, what we see happening

in the urban cores of communities across the United States is that rents

are going up tremendously. We have a rental affordability crisis in this country. We need to increase

supply. We do increase housing opportunity in general and invest more in it.

One of the big challenges that I see in the years to come is this growing inequality. And

part of the way that that expresses itself in cities, places like here in Austin is a lot of displacement

and gentrification. And I will say that I haven’t seen one single city that

I would grade with an A toward handling that challenge. Wow. And it’s understandable a

lot of times why? You know, because there’s this cycle that happens where you have a distressed neighborhood

and then, you know, folks that that may maybe middle income are a little bit more than that, start moving in and they start improving the

homes. But it’s still mostly a distressed neighborhood. And then more investment is made

and more and more folks start moving in. And it’s been the aspiration of the folks who live there to see

more infrastructure investment and see more amenities. But they’re also getting priced out

as right or they’re cashing out in some way. Sometimes they sell their home.

And then before you know it, you’re in this situation as a city where it’s

almost too late. East Austin is a good example of that. I’m not saying that it is

too late there, but but it’s a good example of what happens to many communities across

the United States. So that’s one challenge. Another challenge will be for

rural and small town America to better link these things up. I remember visiting

a small town, Wisconsin, with Representative Sean Duffy

when I was there at HUD. And one of the things I heard over and over was that they needed better

access to transit because the jobs were too far away. And

for rural and small town America, we need to figure out ways to do

what we’ve done a lot of in cities, which is to connect the dots, these different quality of life

components and amenities. I think we still hear there, too. I know the students did

a study on food insecurity and talked to people about that. And the industries had all these

grandiose ideas. Let’s have victory gardens and let’s get better grocery stores when they talk to the people, like

get me transportation to a job. So it it’s like this these two infrastructure in your your housing

and your ability to move out of that area to get other opportunities is really important to see those two

as almost tied at the hip. Absolutely. Absolutely. As we go on. So I have a

last question for you. And the ad is, OK, we have students here and you’ve

been exposed to these students for the last, you know, a semester and a half. And, you know, they’re

very passionate about what they want to do and make a difference in the world. When you think about

how to talk to them about staying involved, not being cynical, moving into

things, what kind of advice would you give to them? Maybe it’s not advice. Maybe just here’s my story.

I’m going to share my story with you. And I have advice. And tonight, I actually have my

last lecture this semester and I’m going to share some of that perspective with them.

First of all, I start off by telling them that they made me feel old already

available. But now, I mean, the advice that I give folks

is number one. It’s true what people say, that you should find things that you’re passionate about, because

if you’re going to spend your career doing it, it needs to be something that you can get up in the morning and want to excel

at because you love it. And then secondly, I asked them.

To always believe in themselves and surround themselves with people who believe in them. And

then third, I tell them really that they should do everything

possible that they can to find a way

to connect these dots. Maybe it’s not what we’ve been talking about necessarily with certain

distinct types of policy. But to think through from the perspective of the people that

are trying to serve, not from their perspective, they’re sitting behind a desk or as an elected official,

you know, getting all the plaudits, but from the perspective of the people that they’re trying to serve. How does

it all work together in policymaking? Indeed, they always keep the perspective

of the folks they’re supposed to serve at the forefront that I don’t think that you can

go wrong ultimately. And I don’t think we can go wrong ending there. And that’s a perfect ending

in terms of what we need to be talking not only to our students, but to the rest of us who are citizens in the United

States. So thank you so much. Really. I really appreciate taking your time to do this. Thank you.

This is Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the

University of Texas at Austin. We take you behind the scenes of policy with the people

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