WASHINGTON — A Harvard-educated architect is Barack Obama's choice to lead his housing agency, which the president-elect says will play a key role in tackling the mortgage crisis and helping families stay in their homes.
Shaun Donovan will bring "fresh thinking" to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Obama said Saturday, pledging that his nominee will abandon "old ideology and outdated ideas" that have stymied some of the agency's past efforts.
"We can't keep throwing money at the problem, hoping for a different result," Obama said in his weekly radio address, which was also released on YouTube. "We need to approach the old challenge of affordable housing with new energy, new ideas and a new, efficient style of leadership."
Donovan, 42, a former HUD official, is credited with increasing affordable options in New York as head of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The announcement comes as Obama nears his informal Christmas-week deadline for assembling a Cabinet. He is nearly finished; a handful of key nominees are expected in the coming days, including appointees for the Departments of Labor and Education.
But the announcement Saturday effectively completes the team of advisors whom Obama intends to rely on most heavily to shape his administration's response to the economic crisis, an agenda dwarfing all others as he prepares to take office in January.
Obama made assembling his economic team among his first orders of business after the election, naming his Treasury secretary, budget director and economic council director and setting them to work in recent weeks.
In naming Donovan, Obama said he wanted his HUD secretary to take a lead role in stemming the tide of foreclosures and increasing the number of families able to remain in their homes amid the crisis.
"This plan will only work with a comprehensive, coordinated federal effort to make it a reality," Obama said. "We need every part of our government working together -- from the Treasury Department to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the agency that protects the money you've put in the bank. And few will be more essential to this effort than the Department of Housing and Urban Development."
